American Social History

26. Mon 3/30 – American women in mid-20th century
Reading: Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided Lives Ch 5 “Cold War Fears.”
This is for background reading to provide historical context to the postwar period. You should also begin reading Walker’s book on women’s magazines, starting with the introductory essay on pp. 1-20.


27. Wed 4/1 – Discussion Day: Nancy Walker, Women’s Magazines, 1940-1960.
Yes, the entire book: it’s short. If you need to read selectively, make sure you read and are prepared to discuss at least 2 or 3 documents from each of the six chapters.

Questions to consider:

What themes and ideas about gender and gender roles are raised by women’s magazines of this period?
Was there more, or less, diversity in these views than you expected?
How do these compare with or relate to prescriptive literature of the early 19th century?
Are women following these gender roles, and how could we know?
How can historians use these magazines as a source of information about women in this time period?
What women are left out, defined as “unwomanly” or otherwise stretch/break gendered boundaries?
What changes and continuities do you see over the 20 year period this book covers?

28. Fri 4/3 – Presentation Day #5
(Don’t forget: if you’re not presenting this week, it is a perfect opportunity to write a response paper! You can use any of the suggestions below as the basis for the response paper, or respond to any of the documents in Walker’s book.)

We have a full slate of presenters this week: Moffitt, Tompkins, Taylor, Dagle and Kozlowska. Here are some suggestions and ideas:

• Listen to and use the 12/16/08 episode of NPR’s On Point radio show. The guest was Sister Soulja. How does her voice and perspective expand the notion of American women’s experiences in the 20th century?
• This one’s taken (Tompkins) – Discuss images of women working in factories during WW2, such as the Rosie the Riveter painting (Saturday Evening Post, May 1943) by Norman Rockwell, or the “We Can Do It” government poster. How were such depictions both feminine and patriotic? For more information, steer clear of Wikipedia and explore other resources on the web, such as the National Park Service, the Rosie Riveter park in California, or an archived StoryCorps oral history with the daughter of “Dot the Welder.”
• Choose one of the chapters in Walker’s book and analyze the articles by comparing them to each other. In your presentation, give us a “guided tour” of the chapter’s primary sources, providing your expert commentary along the way.
• Explore the website “Levittown: Documents of an Ideal Suburb.” Do a little research into Levittown (actually that should be plural, Levittowns: there were three), and use the photographs and memories recorded in Hale’s affectionate tribute site to explore women’s experiences in the preeminent postwar suburb.
• Black women in 1950s popular culture were frequently portrayed using the derogatory “mammy” stereotype, even when those “mammies” were major characters in film or television, giving some limited exposure to African-American actresses. Explore this as an alternative image for American women. You might use the online Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia (search under “Mammy Caricature”), for example.
• Compare what we’ve learned from Walker with women’s magazine for black women in the 1950s. You could begin here, or by reading this review of Noliwe Rook’s book Ladies Pages.
• Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 – right in the middle of this period of heightened attention to female domesticity, public presence, and women’s work. Explore her story in the context of Walker’s collection about women, work, and femininity. Primary sources about her arrest are at the National Archives website, or at a nice website maintained by the Montgomery Advertiser.
• Explore women’s fashions from 1940 to 1960 – perhaps by beginning at the Costume Gallery.

I follow a couple of knitters’ blogs and one is written by a man in Chicago. Here’s a conversation he had on a train recently, and I thought it neatly points up how many people have rather inflexible ideas about gender roles and separate spheres. Even today. Enjoy. Or be shocked. Or both.

23. Mon 3/23 – Separate Spheres and Didactic Literature

Reading: Joan Wolloch Scott, “Gender: An Important Category of Historical Analysis”


24. Wed 3/25 – Separate Spheres and the “Canon” or “Cult” of Domesticity

Reading: Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in 19th Century America” and John S. Abbot, “The Mother At Home” (1833) – focus on Chapter I and II (either read in page image view or as a transcript – pp. 1 through 40).

Discussion questions:

Our reading this week introduces you to feminist analysis of early 19th century prescriptive literature (or “didactic literature”) aimed at women. This genre of literature, including sermons, tracts, instruction manuals, instructed middle-class white women how to behave, how to run their homes, and helps us understand how women’s roles were defined in antebellum America (1800-1860). For more on the genre, see here. The Abbot tract “The Mother at Home” is an example of this kind of literature. Both Smith-Rosenberg’s and Scott’s articles are examples of how feminist historians have approached these kinds of sources as a window into women’s lives in this period.

What ideas about gender were prevalent in antebellum America? Can you identify some of these ideas in Abbot’s tract?

To whom did these definitions apply? And who was excluded from them? Who was defined as “not woman” or “unwomanly”?

One of the major themes in scholarship on separate spheres is the difference between what women were told to do and what they actually did. How does Smith-Rosenberg go about investigating whether women followed this literature’s prescriptions in their own lives?

Can you think of contemporary examples of prescriptive literature in our own time?


25. Fri 3/27 – Presentation Day #4
(don’t forget: if you’re not presenting this week, it is a perfect opportunity to write a response paper!)

For the presenters this week (Cummings, Adreani, Clark):

Please read and use the PDF of Barbara Welter’s groundbreaking article “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860” (American Quarterly, 1966). Use it to investigate additional examples of prescriptive literature such as:

• The rest of Abbot’s tract, i.e. Chapters 3-8.
• Catharine Beecher, “Treatise on Domestic Economy” (1856)
• The New England Primer, one of the most popular and widely-used schoolbooks in America. The 1807 edition is online here.
• The Young Lady’s Book: A Manual of Elegant Recreations, Exercises and Pursuits (this
  1830 work is cited on Welter, p. 152) – full text online at Assumption College’s Women’s History Workshop
• Or choose another tract, besides the Abbot, written prior to 1865 from the Michigan State University digital database “Shaping the Values of Youth: Sunday School Books in 19th Century America” (This database can be searched by category, such as “advice books,” “moral tales,” “immigrants” or “hymnals”). A text with a date of 18–? is okay.

We start a new unit on the social history of American women. And remember to try to get your digital project done and turned in to me this week.

20. Mon 3/9 – The “Pocahontas Problem”
Reading topics: Powhatan Indians, Jamestown and Roanoke colonies, Pocahontas – if you don’t know anything about these try the Digital History textbook for starters, or if you want/need more: “Colonial Landscapes: America Found and Lost” by Charles C. Mann, National Geographic May 2007 (National Geographic link takes you to a nice flash player online exhibit, “Jamestown Interactive.”)

21. Wed 3/11 – Discussion Day about Pocahontas
Reading: Helen Rountree, “Powhatan Indian Women: The People John Smith Barely Saw” [pdf] and a short packet of primary source documents about Pocahontas [pdf] – PRINT and BRING the packet with you, or bring your laptop to access it in class.

Questions:
Legends and reality surrounding this singular historical woman. Who was she?
What do we actually know about her?
Why has she become SUCH a repository for multiple meanings?
In what ways does she or does she not represent other native American women of her time and place?

23. Fri 3/13 – Presentation Day #3
Since I have so many presenters signed up this week (Cross, Jolly, Steeves, Favreau, Desouza), touch base with me by Wednesday about what you’re doing just so I can make sure there’s no overlap.

Some places you might go:

• Discuss a popular culture version of Pocahontas, assessing it in light of what we know/don’t know to be true about her.

• Tell us about another native American woman, using reliable scholarly sources for your biographical sketch (i.e. not Wikipedia). Books/resources I can lend – I need to know on Monday if you want any of these:
  Theda Perdue, Sifters: Native American Women’s Lives
  Ruth Barnes Moynihan, Second to None: A Documentary History of American Women to 1865

• Explore & discuss a few items from the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian. What can we learn about native American women from these objects?

• Read the boarding school memoir of Zitkala Sa/ Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, and share your insights about her experience as a native American woman in the early 20th century.

• Discuss images/portrayals of native American women from late 19th century dime novels in the Stanford University dime novel collection. (“Search” tab –> Native American ethnicity and/or Women). What themes emerge from your analysis? What do these fantasy portrayals tell us, if anything, about real Indian women?

• Read and report on Kateri Tekakwitha, the first native American woman to be canonized as a Catholic saint (the link takes you to an article; you may need to supplement with research of your own).

• Research two or three founding myths from Indian nations which involve women as central characters. How might these be used by a social historian?

Week Nine: Spring Break March 16-20 – Enjoy!