I. General Information

1. Course Title:
History of Women in the U.S.

2. Course Prefix & Number:
HIST 2420

3. Course Credits and Contact Hours:

Credits: 3

Lecture Hours: 3

4. Course Description:

This course will explore the history of women in the United States from pre-European contact to the present. Our topics will be as diverse as are women themselves. We will explore women's changing roles in politics, the law, the labor force, the family and popular culture. The goal of the course is to acquire not just a richer understanding of women's experiences, but also an enhanced understanding of gender and a radically revised historical perspective. Because women differ from each other nearly as much as they differ from men, we will focus throughout the course on the relationships between groups of women divided by class, by race, and by ethnicity.

5. Placement Tests Required:

Accuplacer (specify test):

Reading College Level CLC or Reading College Level

Score:

6. Prerequisite Courses:

There are no prerequisites for this course.

9. Co-requisite Courses:

There are no corequisites for this course.

II. Transfer and Articulation

1. Course Equivalency - similar course from other regional institutions:

MN State University-Moorhead, HIST 375: Women in US History, 3 credits
St. Cloud State University, HIST 106: History of Women in the US, 3 credits

III. Course Purpose

2. MN Transfer Curriculum (General Education) Courses - This course fulfills the following goal area(s) of the MN Transfer Curriculum:

• Goal 5 – History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Goal 7 – Human Diversity

IV. Learning Outcomes

1. College-Wide Outcomes

College-Wide Outcomes/Competencies	Students will be able to:
Demonstrate written communication skills	Successfully complete written assignments based on assigned reading and construct written answers to essay exam questions.
Demonstrate reading and listening skills	Successfully complete objective and essay exam questions based on assigned reading and class lectures.
Discuss/compare characteristics of diverse cultures and environments	Participate in small group discussions based on assigned reading, and help produce oral or written summations of the discussion for evaluation.

2. Course Specific Outcomes - Students will be able to achieve the following measurable goals upon completion of the course:

• Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition. MnTC Goal 5
• Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures. MnTC Goal 5
• Describe and evaluate the role of women in the development of the political, social and economic structures in the United States. MnTC Goal 5
• Analyze and interpret primary sources within their historical context. MnTC Goal 5
• Describe the development and the changing meanings of gender identities in the United States' history and culture. MnTC Goal 7
• Demonstrate an awareness of the individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations between men and women in contemporary society. MnTC Goal 7
• Describe and discuss the experience and contributions (political, social, economic, etc.) of American women to American society. MnTC Goal 7
• Identify and apply alternative explanations for historical developments. MnTC Goal 5
• Develop historical explanations for contemporary social issues. MnTC Goal 5

V. Topical Outline

Listed below are major areas of content typically covered in this course.

1. Lecture Sessions

1. Native American Women
• Life before Columbus
• Culture areas
2. First Contacts
• Spanish
• French
• British
• Africans and the Atlantic Slave Trade
3. Diversity of American Women in the Colonial World
• Southern British colonies
• British and African
• Northern British Colonies
• Puritans and dissenters
• New Netherland
• New France
• New Spain
4. Mothers and Daughters of the American Revolution
• Women in the emerging crisis
• Many roles of women during the war
• Legacies of the war for American women, black and white
• Women in the Great Awakening
• On the margins of politics
• Republican Motherhood
5. The Ideology of True Womanhood and the Market Revolution
• Domesticity and True womanhood
• Industrial Revolution and the textile industry
• Wage earning and the Mill Girls of Lowell
6. The Old South
• Plantation life 
• Mistresses, plain white folk and slaves
• Slave experience: Harriet Jacobs
7. The Way West
• Women on the Overland trail
• Native American women in the West
8. Antebellum Reform
• Expanding the woman’s sphere- moral reform movements
• Abolitionism
• Women’s rights
• Questioning family and sexual life
• Redefining womanhood
9. Civil War
• Women’s involvement in the war
• Emancipation
10. Women’s Lives after the Civil War
• Gender and Postwar Constitutional Amendments
• The Reconstruction South: Black women, white women and racial conflict
• Female Wage labor and Industrial capitalism
• Women of the leisured class
• Woman’s Christian Temperance Union
11. Mass Immigration, and the Consolidation of the West
• Native American women in the West
• Women and the family in the West
• Late 19^th century immigration
• Decision, journey and reception
• Wives, mothers and daughters
12. Women in the Progressive Era
• Growth of the Female labor force
• Labor legislation
• Child labor laws
• Suffrage
• Emergence of feminism
• The Great War
13. Prosperity, Depression and War: the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s
• New woman in the 20’s: politics, work and in the home
• Depression: New deal, work and hard times at home
• War: military service, working women, and everyday life
14. Women in Postwar America
• Family and gender roles in cold war America
• The Feminine Mystique
• Civil Rights Movement
• ERA
15. Modern Feminism
• NOW and liberal feminism
• 60’s revolutions:
• sexual revolution and counterculture
• black power
• war protest
• Women’s liberation
• Diversity and race
• Impact of feminism
• Feminism enters the mainstream
16. Women in a Global Age
• Feminism and the New Right
• Anti-abortion/pro-life
• Reagan Era
• New immigration
• 9/11 and its aftermath
• Changes in family and personal life