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Schedule

Part One: Looking for Women in History

It would be ambitious beyond my daring, I thought, looking about the shelves for books that were not there, to suggest to the students of those famous colleges that they should re-write history, though I own that it often seems a little queer as it is, unreal, lop-sided. . .
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 45.

January 9: Stories We Tell about the Past

Introductory questions to be completed in class.

January 11: What is History?

Reading

Peggy Orenstein, "What's Wrong with Cinderella?" New York Times Magazine, December 24, 2006. ER
Course requirements and policies, schedule, assignments, and resources on website.

January 16: Defining the Past

Reading

Pick one of the historical periods found on the timeline discussed in class on January 11, and read the entries on the topic found in Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica,and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Exercise 1: Definitions - form (due in class & electronically)

You will need your user id and password to fill out the form. Please note that you cannot save the document while you are working. If you need to take a break, please submit and print what you have done, and submit the remaining part separately. You should print two copies to be sure you have one to refer back to when studying for exams. Give the printed exercise to Lori Creed in class. If you prefer, you can work from the text questions, and then paste your answers into the form. You may use this alternative if you cannot access the form, but you need to let Lori Creed & Prof. Sword know of your difficulty.

Text

Electronic Form

January 18: Virginia Woolf, Feminism and Women’s History

Reading

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own: 1-40

January 23: History and Memory

Film Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

Reading

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own: 41-78

January 25: Virginia Woolf at Indiana University

Reading

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own: 79-112
Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens," ER

Part Two: The Heroic and the Ordinary

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 43.

January 30: Christine de Pizan and the Quest for a Golden Age

Reading

Christine de Pizan,  Book of the City of Ladies, TOC,  Part I, Numbers 1-19,  Part II, Numbers 1-4, 11, 12, 37-46, 53, 54,  Part III, Numbers 1-3, 18-19.ER
Boccacio, Concerning Famous Women, passages
Medieval Women Images, British Library Images from Pizan, Boccaccio

February 1: Who’s Afraid of the Distant Past?

Compare the catalogues of "women in history" found at the following websites with each other and with the inhabitants of Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies. What criteria do they use to decide whom to include?

Other Women's Voices

About.com top 100

Britannica top 300

Exercise 2: Christine de Pizan, Feminism and History

(due in class & electronically)

Electronic Form

Text Only

You will need your user id and password to fill out the form. Please note that you cannot save the document while you are working. If you need to take a break, please submit and print what you have done, and submit the remaining part separately. You should print two copies to be sure you have one to refer back to when studying for exams. Give the printed exercise to Lori Creed in class. If you prefer, you can work from the text questions, and then paste your answers into the form. You may use this alternative if you cannot access the form, but you need to let Lori Creed & Prof. Sword know of your difficulty.

February 6: Shakespeare’s  Sisters

Reading

The Life and Art of Artemisia Gentileschi
Artemisia Gentileschi, Wikipedia
Trial Transcripts, see email from Prof. Sword to link in OnCourse

February 8: The Many Lives of Pocahontas

Reading

Selection from The Writings of John Smith K. Kupperman, ed., 67-73. ER

Pocahontas images, White Watercolors of Roanoke Indians

Optional: Explore Virtual Jamestown

February 13: A Wreath for Aphra Behn (lecture cancelled due to hazardous weather)

Reading

Anne Bradstreet, "The Prologue" and "On That High and Mighty Princess." ER
Maria Sybilla Merien images

Exercise 3: Finding Women and Gender in Early Modern History (due in class & electronically)

Electronic Form

Overview and Text

You will need your user id and password to fill out the form. Please note that you cannot save the document while you are working. If you need to take a break, please submit and print what you have done, and submit the remaining part separately. You should print two copies to be sure you have one to refer back to when studying for exams. Give the printed exercise to Lori Creed in class. If you prefer, you can work from the text questions, and then paste your answers into the form. You may use this alternative if you cannot access the form, but you need to let Lori Creed & Prof. Sword know of your difficulty.

February 15: From Pocahontas to Martha Ballard

Bring printed copy of exercise 3 to class; be sure to keep a additional copy for your records, as we will do more with this next week.

February 20: Doing History

Film  A Midwife’s Tale

Reading

Explore dohistory.org, paying particular attention to the primary sources for "One Rape, Two Stories,"

February 22: Do Ordinary Women have a History?

Reading

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: 102-133

Part Three: Revolutions

For women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, 87.

February 27: Was there a Revolution for Women?

Reading

Rousseau, Emile, Book V, 321 - 332. ER
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter Two.

March 1: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination

Reading

Eliza Southgate Bowne's letters to her cousin Moses Porter. "A Girl's Life Eighty Years Ago." ER

Exercise 4: Difference and Equality in the Age of Revolutions (due in class & electronically)

Text

Electronic Form

Please see previous exercises for instructions regarding submission.

 

March 6: From Antislavery to Women's Rights

Course Concept Review Sheet

Reading

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870: Contents (xiii-xix), Reading Questions (205), Introduction: "Our Rights as Moral Beings" (1-77).

March 8: Slaves in the Attic

Reading

Kathryn Kish Sklar, Women's Rights Emerges within the Antislavery Movement, 1830-1870: Documents 1-5, 7, 13, 16, 22, 34, 37, 39-43, 49-54.

Exercise 5: Chronology of Antislavery and Women's Rights (due electronically and in class)

Text

Electronic Form

Please see exercise 3 for instructions regarding submission.

March 10-18: Happy Spring Break!

March 20: Poster for Women's History Month & Midterm Review

Assignment

1) Sketch out in words and (if you wish) images an idea for a poster for women's history month, based on the people and ideas we have been studying in the past two units of this course - i.e. illustrating the significance of women's history from periods before the American Civil War.

2) Generate a list of at least five items (concepts, people, images, events, quotations) that you think likely to be on the midterm. You can, of course, make a longer list. I encourage you to come up with at least one item for each week of the course so far.

Bring a copy of these ideas to discuss and hand-in on March 20; these will count toward your "in-class assignment" grade. Prepare them in such a way that you can retain copy for your own reference as you study for the midterm. I also ask - but do not require - that you share these with me via an electronic form.

Electronic Form to submit list.

Note: If you wish to review the worksheets produced during our groupwork sessions, please visit the "resources" section of the Oncourse site for this course.

 

March 22: Midterm Exam

Part Four: Arguing from History

Professors, schoolmasters, sociologists, clergymen, novelists, essayists, journalists, men who had no qualification save that they were not women, chased my simple and single question – Why are women poor? – until it became fifty questions; until the fifty questions leapt frantically into mid-stream and were carried away.
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 28.

March 27:  Generational Flux/Liberalism and Race

Reading

Peggy Orenstein, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World: Table of Contents, pp. 1-40, and the opening sections and subheadings for the remaining chapters.

Discussion Questions:

1) In Flux, journalist Peggy Orenstein reports on a structured series of conversations she had with women from around the country about "sex, work, love, kids and life." Identify three issues and/or observations from the book about which you would like to have a conversation. Who would your conversation partners be? What questions could you ask to get discussion started?

2) Identify one way in which Orenstein's concerns resemble those of Virginia Woolf in a Room of One's Own, and one way in which they differ.

 

March 29: Socialism, Class and International Feminism

Reading

Timelines: Socialist Feminism Timeline; One Hundred Years of Suffrage; Timeline of the National Women's Party, 1912-1997; Socialism, Marxism and Trade Unionism Crib Sheet

April 3: Street Politics in the Woman Suffrage Movement

Film One Woman, One Vote

Reading

Women and Social Movements Website, Document project timeline

American Memory: Women of Protest

Women Working Website

National Women's Party Digital Collection

Cartoons

See Exercise 6 for guidelines.

April 5: Anti-suffrage and the New Woman

Reading

Miriam Schneir, Feminism in Our Time: 3-20, 38-67

Exercise 6: Images of Suffrage (due electronically and in class.)

As always, you will need to print out 2 copies of this exercise. One for your reference, and one for Lori Creed. Given the continued constraints of the form, you may want to complete your copy using the text version of the exercise, and then paste your answers for electronic submission.

Text

Form

April 10: Hello, Virginia Slims

Reading

Miriam Schneir, Feminism in Our Time: 71-124
Orenstein, Flux: two chapters of your choice.

April 12: Civil Rights and the Rebirth of Feminism

Reading

Miriam Schneir, Feminism in Our Time: 125-187

April 17: Discrimination, Equality & Liberation

Reading

Miriam Schneir, Feminism in Our Time: 201-228, 245-256, 272-326

Explore What is Oral History? on the "History Matters" web site; be sure to read the pages in the section on "Getting Started," including "What is Oral History?," "How do Historians Use It?" and "Interpreting Oral History."

Read the Oral History Techniques page on the Indiana University Center for the Study of History and Memory Website.

Exercise 7: Ask Your Mother (Part I due in class & electronically)

Text

Form

April 19: Baby Quilts

Reading

Miriam Schneir, Feminism in Our Time: 333-342, 428-438

April 24: Objects and Stories

Exercise 7: Ask Your Mother (Part II due in class & electronically)

Text

Form

April 26: Continuity and Change in Women's History

Reading

Peggy Orenstein, Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Love, Kids and Life in a Half-Changed World
"For books continue each other, in spite of our habit of judging them separately. And I must also consider her – this unknown woman – as the descendant of all those other women whose circumstance I have been glancing at and see what she inherits of their characteristics and restrictions."
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 79.

Thursday May 3, 10:15-12:15: Final Exam, Ballantine 003