HIST 250-01, Gender in Nineteenth-Century America, Fall 2009

Abstract

Historian Susan Armitage writes, “Whether one is male or female is, for the most part, a biological fact. But the roles, values, and behaviors people assign to that fact are enormously varied across time.” Gender refers to concepts of manhood and womanhood that shape divisions of labor, family structure, social identity, rule of law, sexual mores, and political rights. Thus gender functions as a system of allocating responsibility and power. Gender is not only central to our sense of self as men or women; it also reflects our changing relationship to the larger society. Because gender differs across cultures, expresses power relations, and changes over time, the study of gender is vital to the field of history. The United States in the nineteenth century saw dramatic change that reverberated through the lives of women and men. Industrialization, the rise of domestic sentimentalism, invasion and colonization of the West, the institution of slavery, the civil war and reconstruction, and urbanization transformed gender systems during this period. Letters, diaries, and oral histories, as well as scholarly works will provide a window on men‟s and women‟s lived experience. Popular literature, political cartoons, and American painting will reveal a discourse on gender that called forth American concerns about liberty and order, hierarchy and equality, individualism and community.