Professor, Kathleen Kennedy

Office: BH 358

Hours: MW 10-11

Phone: x3043

Email: kkennedy@cc.wwu.edu

Web: www.wwu.edu/~kkennedy

 

American Women’s History to 1865

 

This course surveys American women’s history from the Pre-Columbian era through the Civil War.  It focuses on how the key historical processes of this period, such as European colonization, slavery, nation-making, war and revolution and industrialization, were affected by and affected women and ideas about women.  We will pay particular interactions between women across race and class lines and the interrelationships between constructions of gender, race, class and sexuality.

  Required Texts:  The following texts are available at the University Bookstore.  You may also be able to find them on-line.

Harriett Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Mary Rowlandson, Sovereignty and Goodness of God

Dawn Keetley and John Pettegrew, Public Women, Public Words

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Hope Leslie

Clare A. Lyons, Sex Among the Rabble

  Grades: Your grade will be based on four papers and class participation.  You are also expected to attend class and participate actively in the discussions.  You must complete all of the assignments to pass the class.  Late papers will be penalized ten percent per day late and will not be accepted after they have been graded and returned.  I will incompletes without a university recognized excuse.

 

Assignment	Due Date	Points
First Paper	April 10	200 pts.
Second Paper	May 1	200 pts.
Third Paper	May 15	200 pts.
Fourth Paper	June 7	300 pts.
Participation		100 pts.

 

Course Schedule

 

Week	Topic	Reading
One	Introduction and Native American Women	Helen Roundtree, "Powhatan Indian Women," Ethnohistory (Winter 1998) available online
Two: April 3-7	European Women Encountering New Worlds	Montrose, "The Work of Gender in the Discourses of Discovery," Representations (Winter 1991) available online Begin Rowlandson
Three: April 4-10 First Paper due, April 10 No Class: 4/12-4/14	Encountering New Worlds	Finish Rowlandson     Begin Lyons
Four: April 17-21 April 17, Discuss Rowlandson	Gender Frontiers and Building a New Society	Lyons, cont Keeley and Pettegrew, pp. 58-86
Five: April 24-28 Discussion on Lyons 4/28	Building a New Society	Lyons
Six: May 1-5 No Class May 5	Rewriting The Nation’s History	Sedgwick, Part I
Seven: May 8-12 Discussion on Child May 12	Nation-Building	Sedgwick, Part II
Eight: May 15-19	Reform Emphasize document numbers: 28, 29, 37, 43, 49, 50, 54, 57, 60,64, 65, 66	Keetley and Pettegrew, Part III
Nine: May 22-26   Discussion on Jacobs, May 26	Slavery	Jacobs
Ten: May 29-June 1 No Class, 5/29	Civil War and Review