home |
many pasts |
evidence |
www.history |
blackboard |
reference
talking history | syllabi | students | teachers | puzzle | about us
talking history | syllabi | students | teachers | puzzle | about us
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 16:34:17 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Pennee Bender
Subject: Introduction to the Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Welcome to our first =93Talking History=94 forum. This will focus on women'=
s history and will be led by Gerda Lerner. Professor Lerner, as many of you=
know, is the leading figure in the development of U.S. women's history in t=
he past thirty years. A former President of the Organization of American His=
torians, she is also the Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita, at =
the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Professor Lerner will both answer que=
stions about the teaching of women's history and lead a discussion on this t=
opic among participants. The discussion will focus particularly on how to in=
corporate women's history into the standard U.S. history survey course, appr=
oaches to teaching women's history and suggestions for resources or strategi=
es for teaching women's history.
Although the moderators will respond to questions and comments, we also hope=
that participants will respond to one another and continue the discussion a=
fter the guest moderator's month. These forums are open to anyone with acce=
ss to the Web and can be accessed from the History Matters Web site (url: ht=
tp://historymatters.gmu.edu). Subscribers also receive all the posted messa=
ges via e-mail and can post messages via e-mail.
We look forward to your participation in the forum.
Sincerely,
Pennee Bender
History Matters Coordinator
American Social History Project
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 16:38:24 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Pennee Bender
Subject: Introduction to the Forum
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Welcome to our first =93Talking History=94 forum. This will focus on women'=
s
history and will be led by Gerda Lerner. Professor Lerner, as many of you
know, is the leading figure in the development of U.S. women's history in
the past thirty years. A former President of the Organization of American
Historians, she is also the Robinson-Edwards Professor of History, Emerita,
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Professor Lerner will both answer questions about the teaching of women's
history and lead a discussion on this topic among participants. The
discussion will focus particularly on how to incorporate women's history
into the standard U.S. history survey course, approaches to teaching women's=
history and suggestions for resources or strategies for teaching women's
history.
Although the moderators will respond to questions and comments, we also
hope that participants will respond to one another and continue the
discussion after the guest moderator's month. These forums are open to
anyone with access to the Web and can be accessed from the History
Matters Web site (url: http://historymatters.gmu.edu). Subscribers also
receive all the posted messages via e-mail and can post messages via e-mail.=
We look forward to your participation in the forum.
Sincerely,
Pennee Bender
History Matters Coordinator
American Social History Project
=========================================================================
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 18:24:48 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Gerda Lerner
Subject: Gerda Lerners Opening Statement--Women's History
Women's History (WH) is the history of half the human population.
It has been long neglected, ignored and marginalized. To this day,
textbooks inadequately reflect the growth and breadth of this "new" field.
Th tremendous growth of the field of WH in the past 30 years has made it
difficult for faculty to keep up with the flood of books, articles and
bibliographies. Our discussion should help to orient such inquiry, allow us
to share successful strategies of implementation and help us focus on
issues within the field that need clarification and, perhaps, sharper
definition.
Most college und highschool history courses nowadays include "women
worthies" in their currricula and many incorporate the "contributions" of
women in the general narrative. I put these words in parentheses to
indicate that they are in themselves dubious categories. Who decides which
women are "worthy" of inclusion? How can half the population "contribute"
to the work , activities and thoughts of the other half? Who decides on the
categories? It is certainly worthwhile to acquaint our students with US
women who have made outstanding contributions to our thought, our culture,
our institutions. But it is not sufficient to do that, and no more.
The moment we consider the categories for inclusion in the
narrative, we come to some fundamental questions. Can we make
generalizations about "women?" at all? How should we deal with the
differences among women in regard to race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
orientation? How do we assess the importance of women's activities when
compared to those of men? For ex. we tell the story of wars entirely
focused on the activities of men. How about the activities of women during
wars - how can they be told and related to the activities of men?
How do we deal with questions of gender and gender definitions? How
do they relate to WH? How can we make sure that our narrative includes
stories told from women's point of view? How much of our narrative and text
should be focused entirely on women?
The questions and problems are many and vexing. Perhaps it would be
helpful to focus our discussion by asking participants to address one or
more of these themes:
1. Successful strategies for teaching WH as part of a general survey course
2. Successful strategies for teaching units of WH or specialized courses
3. Practical problems in doing 1 and 2
4. Conceptual and theoretical problems
If participants have other ideas on how to engage in this
discussion without going all over the map, please share them with us. This
is an experiment for me and I need all the help I can get.
I look forward to it with some anxiety ( mostly about the
technology) and with great anticipation. It is, after all, a discussion on
my favorite subject.
Gerda Lerner
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 18:26:04 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Carl Schulkin
Subject: Re: Gerda Lerners Opening Statement--Women's History
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Professor Lerner,
As a high school teacher who has struggled for almost two decades
with the problem of integrating Women's History into the U.S. Survey course,
I welcome the approach you have decided to take in this forum. I am
particularly interested in the strategies which you and other practicing
historians have taken in integrating Women's History as part of the general
survey course. One of my greatest frustrations has been the negative
response of my students (both female and male) to the readings in Women's
History that I have assigned them in an effort to supplement the textbook.
Most recently, my students have complained that Sara Evans, BORN FOR LIBERTY
and Rosalind Rosenberg, DIVIDED LIVES were not sufficiently interesting or
well written to justify the time and effort we devoted to reading and
discussing them. My students are accustomed to reading college level books
and they have responded enthusiastically to books as difficult as August
Meier and Elliott Rudwick, FROM PLANTATION TO GHETTO and Douglas Miller, THE
BIRTH OF MODERN AMERICA 1820-1850. Thus, what I need most are
recommendations from experienced survey teachers regarding readings in
Women's History which have engaged their students.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions you might have.
Carl Schulkin
Pembroke Hill School
Kansas City, MO 64112
At 06:24 PM 9/11/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Women's History (WH) is the history of half the human population.
>It has been long neglected, ignored and marginalized. To this day,
>textbooks inadequately reflect the growth and breadth of this "new" field.
>Th tremendous growth of the field of WH in the past 30 years has made it
>difficult for faculty to keep up with the flood of books, articles and
>bibliographies. Our discussion should help to orient such inquiry, allow us
>to share successful strategies of implementation and help us focus on
>issues within the field that need clarification and, perhaps, sharper
>definition.
>
> Most college und highschool history courses nowadays include "women
>worthies" in their currricula and many incorporate the "contributions" of
>women in the general narrative. I put these words in parentheses to
>indicate that they are in themselves dubious categories. Who decides which
>women are "worthy" of inclusion? How can half the population "contribute"
>to the work , activities and thoughts of the other half? Who decides on the
>categories? It is certainly worthwhile to acquaint our students with US
>women who have made outstanding contributions to our thought, our culture,
>our institutions. But it is not sufficient to do that, and no more.
>
> The moment we consider the categories for inclusion in the
>narrative, we come to some fundamental questions. Can we make
>generalizations about "women?" at all? How should we deal with the
>differences among women in regard to race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
>orientation? How do we assess the importance of women's activities when
>compared to those of men? For ex. we tell the story of wars entirely
>focused on the activities of men. How about the activities of women during
>wars - how can they be told and related to the activities of men?
>
> How do we deal with questions of gender and gender definitions? How
>do they relate to WH? How can we make sure that our narrative includes
>stories told from women's point of view? How much of our narrative and text
>should be focused entirely on women?
>
> The questions and problems are many and vexing. Perhaps it would be
>helpful to focus our discussion by asking participants to address one or
>more of these themes:
>
>1. Successful strategies for teaching WH as part of a general survey course
>2. Successful strategies for teaching units of WH or specialized courses
>3. Practical problems in doing 1 and 2
>4. Conceptual and theoretical problems
>
> If participants have other ideas on how to engage in this
>discussion without going all over the map, please share them with us. This
>is an experiment for me and I need all the help I can get.
>
> I look forward to it with some anxiety ( mostly about the
>technology) and with great anticipation. It is, after all, a discussion on
>my favorite subject.
>
>Gerda Lerner
>
>
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 19:58:36 +0000
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: gyang
Subject: Re: Gerda Lerners Opening Statement--Women's History
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Professor Lerners raised some very important issues for all who teach survey
courses. Even the "worthies" were frequently not given enough worthy time in
class. Partly this results from how texts are written. Until and unless a more
balance treatment of women's history is included in textbooks, the subject will
I believe continue to be halfheartedly taught in surveys. While instructors can
always expand any themes and topics and assign topics works, texts seem to be
play a critical role in expanding coverage of this or any topic in an
introductory course.
Guocun Yang
Manchester Community Technical College
Connecticut
Gerda Lerner wrote:
> Women's History (WH) is the history of half the human population.
> It has been long neglected, ignored and marginalized. To this day,
> textbooks inadequately reflect the growth and breadth of this "new" field.
> Th tremendous growth of the field of WH in the past 30 years has made it
> difficult for faculty to keep up with the flood of books, articles and
> bibliographies. Our discussion should help to orient such inquiry, allow us
> to share successful strategies of implementation and help us focus on
> issues within the field that need clarification and, perhaps, sharper
> definition.
>
> Most college und highschool history courses nowadays include "women
> worthies" in their currricula and many incorporate the "contributions" of
> women in the general narrative. I put these words in parentheses to
> indicate that they are in themselves dubious categories. Who decides which
> women are "worthy" of inclusion? How can half the population "contribute"
> to the work , activities and thoughts of the other half? Who decides on the
> categories? It is certainly worthwhile to acquaint our students with US
> women who have made outstanding contributions to our thought, our culture,
> our institutions. But it is not sufficient to do that, and no more.
>
> The moment we consider the categories for inclusion in the
> narrative, we come to some fundamental questions. Can we make
> generalizations about "women?" at all? How should we deal with the
> differences among women in regard to race, ethnicity, religion, sexual
> orientation? How do we assess the importance of women's activities when
> compared to those of men? For ex. we tell the story of wars entirely
> focused on the activities of men. How about the activities of women during
> wars - how can they be told and related to the activities of men?
>
> How do we deal with questions of gender and gender definitions? How
> do they relate to WH? How can we make sure that our narrative includes
> stories told from women's point of view? How much of our narrative and text
> should be focused entirely on women?
>
> The questions and problems are many and vexing. Perhaps it would be
> helpful to focus our discussion by asking participants to address one or
> more of these themes:
>
> 1. Successful strategies for teaching WH as part of a general survey course
> 2. Successful strategies for teaching units of WH or specialized courses
> 3. Practical problems in doing 1 and 2
> 4. Conceptual and theoretical problems
>
> If participants have other ideas on how to engage in this
> discussion without going all over the map, please share them with us. This
> is an experiment for me and I need all the help I can get.
>
> I look forward to it with some anxiety ( mostly about the
> technology) and with great anticipation. It is, after all, a discussion on
> my favorite subject.
>
> Gerda Lerner
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 11:35:56 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: John McClymer
Subject: Re: Gerda Lerners Opening Statement--Women's History
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
This is in response to Professor Lerner's invitation to "focus on
issues within the field that need clarification and, perhaps, sharper
definition." In particular, I would like to suggest a way of thinking about
the ways we seek to integrate notions of gender into so-called mainstream
narratives. Since the examples I use are visual, I have created a webpage
-- http://www.assumption.edu/whw/WH/default.html where I have spelled out
my suggestion.
John McClymer
History
Assumption College
Worcester, MA 01609
508 767 7278
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1998 12:34:57 EDT
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Bill Friedheim
Subject: Examples?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
I share the concern of Gerda Lerner and others about the tendency to segment
and decontextualize women's history. What we need are specific examples --
successful, problematic or works in progress -- of attempts to integrate
women's history into survey courses in ways that encourage students to
interrogate primary sources, make connections and situate events in the
context of gender, race, class, time, place, culture and the larger currents
of American history.
In this vein, I appreciate John McClymer's thoughtful piece on this matter
matter in which he comments
that "when we seek to determine how to integrate issues of gender into the
historical 'mainstream,' we need to define the task as recasting our basic
narrative not only to include women and women's issues but also to appreciate
how notions of gender helped shape the ways Americans understood the whole of
their world." In his modesty, McClymer neglected to cite a what I think is a
wonderful model and set of classroom exercises of how to accomplish this that
can be found at
.
In my own survey course at the Borough of Manhattan Community College I have
had mixed success having students contextualize the Declaration of Sentiments.
I usually have students look at the Declaration on the Web without first
identifying it, then ask them over a series of classes to find the document
its based on (not always so obvious to community college students), do a
textual comparison, and then gather information to put the Seneca Falls
document in very particular context. As I struggled last Spring to refine
this set exercises, I had the good fortune to hear and see a presentation by
Catherine Lavender at the NY Metropolitan American Studies Association. She
has a wonderful set of web-pages that she uses with her students at the
College of Staten Island (CUNY) that engages students in a process of
discovery that situates Seneca Falls in the context of a tradition of liberty
rhetoric
.
Her presentation was an eye opener for me, and I now use her web page in my
survey class where I use multimedia as well as print materials.
I'd appreciate comments from others if they have developed approaches to
Seneca Falls that address these issues of both exploring the particularity of
women's history and integrating it into the "mainstream" (to use John
McClymer's term) of American and world history.
One more suggestion: I think it would be useful for this discussion if some
of us examined how the materials on the "History Matters" website can be used
in the classroom to examine the questions that Gerda Lerner raises in her
initial comments.
Bill Friedheim
Borough of Manhattan Community College
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 16:27:24 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Gerda Lerner
Subject: Gerda Lerner's Response
This is my first response to those who have commented in our
discussion of WH. I am delighted with your interest and your stimulating
comments. I looked up two of the websites and was very impressed with what
you are trying to do and how you are helping your students. But first, as
a practical matter, I must ask you, in this discussion, to state what you
want to say in your response, and not only rely on what is on your web
sites. I do not have enough facility with the internet nor do I have the
time to look up all the website references. I am sure, other participants
will be glad to use these references, so by all means, put them in. But
state what you have to say in the body of your response to me. Thank you.
How to integrate women in the survey. I have always tried to set
myself some specific goals as a teacher: 1) I make a list of 25-30 women
who should become familiar to the students, as they become familiar with
important male figures in US history. These I insert in the class
presentation wherever they belong chronologically and I invite the students
to do at least one biographical short paper in which they can chose either
a man or a woman. Sometimes I announce I will give one Identification
question on a test and the biographical information on the persons on my
list will be part of the test.
2) When discussing major social movements in US history -
abolitionism, reform, the Progressive movement, the labor movement, the New
Deal - I always ask myself, in preparing my class work : What have women
contributed to this movement?
How important was their contribution? in which ways were their
contributions different from those of men, and why?
There is now an ample literature available to teachers with which
to answer these questions. YOu may want to order the American Historical
Association's pamphlets "Teaching Women's History," one written by me, in
1981, the other written by Linda Gordon. They have many useful suggestions
and a lot of bibliographic information. The Organization of American
Historians has also published a Teachers Guide on Integrating Women in the
Curriculum.
3) I ask the question, "What did women do while men were doing what
the textbook tells us was important?" F. Ex. if we ask this question in
discussing the Civil War, it leads us to consider women's role on the home
front; the importance of that role both North and South; the role of women
in the military as nurses, washerwomen, spies, and -in the case of Harriet
Tubman, leader of a military expedition. In discussing the role of nurses,
we can point out the significance and innovation of founding a Nursing
Service and later the Red Cross, of the lasting importance of improved
health care for the soldiers in preventing deaths through infection,
malnutrition and poor post-operative care. If we deal with these gender
problems in all the US wars, students are naturally interested in
discussing whether wars also help to promote the status of women.
4) Another strategy I found helpful is to look at all the examples
I offer in making the survey interesting, lively and dramatic. I make it my
challenge to use women, as well as men, in these examples.
I have other strategies and analytic questions to suggest, but I
will leave them for another day. Please let me know if you are interested
in my doing that.
The suggestion several of you made, to use "gender" as a means of
integrating women is also useful. Practically speaking, the questions to
ask is "How were gender-roles defined in any given period? Who defined
gender roles? What difference did such definitions make to men, to women?"
Another useful question is "How do the relations between the sexes affect
the social and economic relations of the sexes in society?" If, f. ex.
gender definitions in antebellum USA required "ladies" to wear 25-30 lbs of
cumbersome clothing, what impact did this have on their economic
opportunities and on the public roles, if any, which they could play?
Last, for today I want to raise a concern I have with the materials
on the websites. It is wonderfully easy for students using a website to
find everything prepared and ready, No trips to the library, no searching
through books and references. But is it not also our jobs as college
teachers, to teach research skills? I have always felt I must equip
students to learn how to research any topic they are interested in by using
library resources. As a practical tip: If you could get the library of
your college to invest in the 4 volume Notable American Women, ed.by Edward
James et al, you could give research assignments to your students using
this source. I have found that very useful and I have found students at all
levels, love this kind of assignment. If the library can also order Darlene
Clakr Hine's Black Women in America you could include black women in your
list and presentations.
That's all for today. Gerda Lerner
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 11:56:05 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Sophie Lau
Subject: Incorporating Women's History
I teach the Advanced Placement U.S. Survey, so it is always a challenge to incorporate women's history while also covering the required curriculum. Hopefully the A.P. curriculum itself will move in the direction of incorporating WH. Until then, I will try to incorporate women whenever possible. I appreciate Gerda Lerner's questions to help us think about where we can include women while discussing "major events," such as the Civil War. I recently completed a unit on early New England and the Puritans, and I used the trial of Anne Hutchinson (this is the first time I have used it extensively). It proved to be a great exercise for discussing gender roles, expectations of women's behavior, and also the complexity of Puritan thought. I was able to use Anne Hutchinson's trial both to broaden my students' understanding of Massacbusetts Bay Colony, and also to introduce ideas about gender. We also looked at several legal documents defining coverture and selected poems of Anne Bradstreet, for a different perspective.
Last year I found my students quite resistant to women's history when they perceived it to be "separate" from the textbook material -- the trick seems to be to integrate women's history as smoothly as possible into the story of America. I will be looking for other examples that will work as well as Anne Hutchinson.
This forum certainly will be a great help.
Sophie Lau
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 11:18:50 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Carl Schulkin
Subject: Re: Incorporating Women's History
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
I appreciate Sophie Lau's comments and I have experienced a similar
problem with my high school students when they are assigned materials which
they perceive to be very different from a text. That is one of the reasons
that I have sought to find some kind of "text" to assign to them throughout
a semester or even the year. I find it interesting that after asking for
suggestions for such "texts" to assign, I have thus far received little
response. I like the analytical questions that Gerda Lerner has suggested
that we use with our students. But I would still like to hear from others
on this listserv in regard to specific readings they assign to generate
discussion of those questions.
Carl Schulkin
Pembroke Hill School
Kansas City, MO 64112
=========================================================================
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 1998 12:12:46 -0800
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Susan Kilgore
Subject: Re: Incorporating Women's History
In-Reply-To: <199809221618.LAA16554@gvi.gvi.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Carl--
I just used Howard Zinn's "People's History of the US," ch. 6 on what he
calls "the intimately oppressed" to foster discussion of women and women's
history in the United States. Good intro to the area and highly readable.
It works very well with undergraduates and presents a comparative model,
juxtaposing the oppression of women as a group to the oppressions of poor
whites, African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos/as. For a high
school class, it might work to xerox just that chapter, and or to request
reprints from the publisher.
Good luck.
Susan Kilgore
WSU/Pullman
> I appreciate Sophie Lau's comments and I have experienced a similar
>problem with my high school students when they are assigned materials which
>they perceive to be very different from a text. That is one of the reasons
>that I have sought to find some kind of "text" to assign to them throughout
>a semester or even the year. I find it interesting that after asking for
>suggestions for such "texts" to assign, I have thus far received little
>response. I like the analytical questions that Gerda Lerner has suggested
>that we use with our students. But I would still like to hear from others
>on this listserv in regard to specific readings they assign to generate
>discussion of those questions.
>
>Carl Schulkin
>Pembroke Hill School
>Kansas City, MO 64112
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 01:22:18 -0400
Reply-To: Tracey Weis
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Tracey Weis
Subject: Texts and Contexts in Women's History
In-Reply-To:
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Friends and colleagues,
My undergrad students in U.S. Womens History had just finished reading
excerpts from Gerda Lerner's path-breaking essay, published in 1975 in
FEMINIST STUDIES, when Lerner's Opening Statement appeared on the Womens
History Forum. I welcome the opportunity to respond to Lerner's
provocative questions and to the responses posed by New Media Classroom
colleagues and others interested in the field of Womens History. In
particular, I would like to second Bill Friedheim's call for more analysis
of specific examples of "integration" that encourage students to: 1)
interrogate primary sources, and 2) make connections and situate events in
the context of gender, race, class, time, place, culture and the larger
currents of American history. Obviously, the 150th anniversary of the 1848
Seneca Falls convention has invigorated the investigation of an event
already defined as significant in the narratives of both Women's History
and U.S. History. As Bill observed, the development of rich, web-based
resources like those created by John McClymer
and Catherine Lavender
enables us to address both the particularity of women's history and its
integration into the "mainstream" of U.S. and world history.
But these electronic resources raise intriguing questions about the
relationships between texts and contexts that Carl Schulkin, Guocun Yang,
and Susan Kilgore have raised. I would like to suggest that electronic
resources (e.g., "History Matters" and websites developed by McClymer and
Lavender) do not substitute for textbooks used in classrooms (e.g. Zinn's
PEOPLE'S HISTORY) nor for essential reference sources (e.g., NOTABLE
AMERICAN WOMEN or BLACK WOMEN IN AMERICA). Websites which include
biographical or encylopedic material may discourage students from pursuing
traditional research in libraries, but web-mounted virtual archives,
replete with primary sources, encourage students to develop and refine a
broad range of research skills and strategies. Hyperlinked sites enable
students and other users to "travel" from one virtual archive to another
and to draw on an increasingly extensive array of primary material--texts,
images, and sounds. Although students may approach websites delighted to
find everything "prepared and ready," as Lerner warned, it is our task as
educators to teach students to critically interrogate electronic resources
in the same way that we teach them to evaluate print resources.
It is the interesting, lively, and dramatic examples, as Lerner reminds
us, that fascinate our students. Presenting students with a diverse and
contradictory selection of primary materials (as Sophie Lau did in her
exploration of MA Bay Colony when she drew on the trial of Anne
Hutchinson, documents on coverture, and Anne Bradstreets poetry) engages
them in the complex intellectual tasks/questions that Lerner outlined.
"How were gender-roles defined in any given period? Who defined gender
roles? What difference did such definitions make to men, to women?" "How
do the relations between the sexes affect the social and economic
relations of the sexes in society?")
A final observation: the particular examples mentioned in the recent
postings point to the various ways in which notions of liberal
individualism and the rhetoric of rights inform the political narratives
of both Women's History and U.S. History. I would welcome more discussion
of ways to encourage thoughtful analysis of the individual and collective
tensions between equality and difference, autonomy and integration. Recent
discussion threads on H-Women have identified various kinds of student
resistance to the integration of gender (and race) into narratives of U.S.
History. In the face of such resistance, it is crucial that we select our
examples (people and events) carefully because these examples (e.g., Jane
Addams, Jo Ann Robinson) will suggest the possibilities (and limits) of
recasting the national narrative. As Bill and others have urged, specific
examples of practice (the rationales and consequences of
selecting particular personalities, events, readings, websites)
will be appreciated.
Tracey
Tracey Weis
Department of History
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551
Phone: 717/871-2025
Fax: 717/871-2485
Email: tweis@marauder.millersv.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 15:14:31 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Gerda Lerner
Subject: Gerda Lerner's Response 9/23
Thank you Sophia Lau for your interesting example of how you use Anne
Hutchinson's trial in teaching about Puritanism. This is a good example of
how a dramatic personal story can be used to "hook" student interest to the
history of women. You might also want to try using the story of Mary Dyer.
It is equally dramatic and can be tied to the story of William Penn and the
Quaker settlement of the colony.
You and others might be interested in looking at source books in Women's
History. These are some I have used with great student approval: Linda
Kerber & Jane S. deHart(eds.) Women's America:Refocusing the Past, 4th ed.
(N.Y.Oxford UP, 1995);
Ruth Moynahan, Cynthia Russett, Laurie Crumpacher (eds.) Second to None:A
Documentary History of American Women, (2 vols. Univ. of Nebraska
Press,1993); Gerda Lerner (ed.) The Female Experience :An American
Documentary, (NY:Oxford UP, 1992) and Gerda Lerner, (ed.)Black Women in
White America: A Documentary History (NY: Vintage Press, reprint 1992).
All of these books contain brief primary sources, arranged chronologically
so as to fit into the commonly used periodization of American History
survey courses. A selection of these documents, together with a list of
important women can be integrated into the survey course without special
emphasis, simply as part of the US history narrative. My book, Female
Experience is arranged not chronologically, but topically, in such a way
that each topic could represent a teaching unit. Teachers have reported
good success with using one or more topic-units to add to their survey
courses. The same can be done with my Black Women book of primary sources.
I hope this answers Carl Schulkins question. I will write later
this week to discuss more analytical questions one can use in course
preparation.
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 16:30:03 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Don Quinn Kelley
Subject: Re: Incorporating Women's History
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Carl,
I read with interest your comment on a "text" on women and United States
history. The challenge might be to broaden your students beyond the need to
expect a "textbook." This might be a place to talk about the variety of
sources and the legitimacy of sources that have not been standardized into a
"text." This is particularly of importance for subject areas ih which the
content of "texts" is sometimes problematic or too limited to justify the cost
of the book.
Hope that you are well.
Don Quinn
Carl Schulkin wrote:
> I appreciate Sophie Lau's comments and I have experienced a similar
> problem with my high school students when they are assigned materials which
> they perceive to be very different from a text. That is one of the reasons
> that I have sought to find some kind of "text" to assign to them throughout
> a semester or even the year. I find it interesting that after asking for
> suggestions for such "texts" to assign, I have thus far received little
> response. I like the analytical questions that Gerda Lerner has suggested
> that we use with our students. But I would still like to hear from others
> on this listserv in regard to specific readings they assign to generate
> discussion of those questions.
>
> Carl Schulkin
> Pembroke Hill School
> Kansas City, MO 64112
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 18:46:32 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Carl Schulkin
Subject: Re: Gerda Lerner's Response 9/23
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Professor Lerner,
I appreciate your recommendations of specific materials that I might
try with my students. I am familiar with and have used selections from all
but one of the sources you recommend. High school students, however, need
to be provided with a context for understanding such sources, a context
which might be provided by reading secondary sources or listening to
lectures. Before I went back to the proverbial drawing board to draft new
lectures, I was hoping that there might be some secondary readings I could
use directly with my students. Thus far, Susan Kilgore's recommendation of
Zinn's chapter in A PEOPLE'S HISTORY sounds the most promising and I plan to
read that chapter tonight. What I think I have learned from your response
and those of other contributors to this list is that list members do not
have secondary readings that they strongly recommend for use in survey
courses. And that in itself may be valuable advice.
Thank you for your help.
Carl Schulkin
Pembroke Hill School
Kansas City, MO 64112
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 13:39:19 +0000
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Tracey Weis
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
Dear Gerda, Sophie, Carl, and Don,
I would like to return to the question of the relationships between the
TEXTS that we select for our students to read and the CONTEXTS that we
establish and/or that we encourage our students to develop. Conceptualizin=
g
the dynamics between the dramatic personal stories (e.g. Anne Hutchinson,
Mary Dyer, Phillis Wheatley, Jarena Lee) and broader historical forces and
processes (e.g. Puritanism; race, female literacy and evangelical
Christianity) is, it seems to me, at the heart of our enterprise. The way W=
E
understand, define, and select texts (both original works and authoritative
sources) sets the stage for the kinds of interpretations we present or the
kinds of syntheses our students develop. If I understand Carl's dilemma, hi=
s
students resist readings that they perceive to be "different from" a text.
I wonder if they are troubled by the tension and contradiction that emerge
when dramatic personal stories challenge their own sense of historical
development. Are they unsettled when two authoritative voices clash? I woul=
d
echo Don's suggestion that we encourage students to stick with the
untidiness and chaos that conflicting texts generate and that we not rescue
students too quickly from their resistance or their confusion. In short, I
think there is a pedagogical point to disequilibrium (in moderation, of
course!).
The source books in Women's History that Gerda recommended all include
primary documents that instructors can draw from to extend, confirm, and/or
challenge other readings/exercises. Shrewd selection of texts is our
responsibility. Even if we choose wisely (whatever that may mean), the
intriguing challenge of constructing context remains. One of the questions
that this exchange about texts raises for me is: Who is responsible for the
narrative that is presented/developed in the classroom? The instructor? The
authors of the texts? The students? To what extent is the authority shared
and how? Multiple voices from source books (i.e., many different dramatic
personal stories) decenter the authority of a single text, as Don notes, bu=
t
how does the broader narrative get recentered or reconfigured? What kinds o=
f
intellectual work do we do in our classes? What kinds of intellectual work
do we ask our students to do? How much time do we, should we spend preparin=
g
to present the narrative line(s)? How much time do we, should we spend
helping students take responsibility for reconciling competing stories? Wha=
t
kinds of expectations do we have of and for our students? How capable do we
think they are of contending with multiple voices and constructing
narratives?
Having to figure out where and how the dramatic experience of Jo Ann
Robinson, detailed in her memoir, fit within the familiar story of the
Montgomery Bus Boycott challenged students in my women's history class.
Pairing Robinson's memoir (THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT AND THE WOMEN WHO
STARTED IN ) with essays in MAJOR PROBLEMS IN AMERICAN WOMEN'S HISTORY
prompted them to compare and contrast the goals and strategies of the
Women's Political Council in Montgomery, Daisy Bates in the NAACP, Fannie
Lou Hamer in the MFDP, Ella Baker and Septima Clark in SCLC, Kathleen
Cleaver, Mary King, and Casey Hayden in SNCC, and Esther Padilla and
Herminia Rodriguez in the UFWA. Presentations by women from the local AME
church in Lancaster, PA about their experiences in the Northern agitation
for black freedom generated numerous questions about the signifcance of
regionalism in race relations, the dynamics of racial and gender solidarity=
,
and about the relationship between personal experience and knowledge. A
final exercise which directed students to online interviews of Kathleen
Cleaver and Angela Davis (interviews from Frontline program "Two Nations of
Black America" available at
) raised, among other
issues, questions about the role of retrospective and memory in history.
I recognize that high school teachers like Carl face a different set of
constraints (and opportunities) than folks teaching at the post-secondary
level in community colleges, state universities, and other institutions of
higher education. Teaching a one-semester survey of women's history present=
s
different pedagogical and intellectual challenges than teaching the U.S.
Survey at the high school level. Yet, I think the principle of multivocal
texts is pertinent in most, if not all, sites. The associated issues of
authority and narrative pertain, I imagine, to some of the analytical
questions that Gerda has promised to pose for us.
Thanks for the engaging conversation!
Tracey
Tracey M. Weis
Department of History
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551
Tele.: 717/871-2025
Fax: 717/871-2485
Dept.: 717/872-3555
Email: tweis@marauder.millersv.edu
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 15:34:36 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: John McClymer
Subject: multivocal texts
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Dear Professor Lerner and others:
I am very struck by the cogency of Tracy Weis' most recent post
(9/24) about the "multivocal" nature of historical study. Historians, like
other scholars, approach texts, whether primary or secondary, as
participant/observers of an ongoing conversation. So Weis "prompted [her
students] to compare and contrast the goals and strategies of the Women's
Political Council in Montgomery, Daisy Bates in the NAACP, Fannie Lou Hamer
in the MFDP, Ella Baker and Septima Clark in SCLC, Kathleen Cleaver, Mary
King, and Casey Hayden in SNCC, and Esther Padilla and Herminia Rodriguez
in the UFWA." These women, or at least many of them, knew what the others
were doing, were comparing strategies, were assessing outcomes. To see how
one understood herself, we and our students need to see how she understood
at least some of the others. Similarly, our colleagues read what we write
in the context of what other scholars are saying. So the task is to help
students hear the other voices.
The task is made harder by some of their previous training. They
have been coached to focus upon the "main idea," and have learned, in the
process, to screen out voices other than the author's. As a result, they
often read in a radically impoverished way. How can we help them read more
effectively?
My colleague at Assumption, Lucia Knoles, likens the task to
getting students to read as though they were sitting in Thomas Jefferson's
library at his desk. Jefferson arranged his desk on the principle of the
lazy Susan so that he could look through six or so books at once. You
couldn't fully grasp what any author was saying, he maintained, unless you
knew what the authors who formed the context for that book had written.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton presumed that everyone who heard the Declaration of
Sentiments would hear the echoes of the Declaration of Independence. And
most of my students do. But, when her contemporary, Jane Swisshelm, wrote
in LETTERS TO COUNTRY GIRLS that men afflicted with "masculine superiority
fever" were just putting into practice the ideas of the leading
philosophers, preachers, and authors of the day, virtually none of my
students have any idea whom she had in mind. Even if they had Jefferson's
desk, they wouldn't know which other books to open. And Swisshelm didn't
name names. She didn't have to. Her readers knew exactly whom she meant.
So Weis, I think, hits the nail exactly on the head. What I would
like to add is the simple point that hypermedia, by their very nature,
provide highly useful tools in this regard. When I posted Swisshelm's essay
for my students, I embedded a link to an essay in GODEY'S LADY'S BOOK by
Goethe on the Sphere of Woman in which he argued that women should not
complain that men restrict them to a domestic world because theirs is a
higher and more fulfilling sphere of action. I do this routinely. It is not
something one can ONLY do using the new media. But it IS something one can
do with them. They are about links.
John McClymer
History
Assumption College
Worcester, MA 01609
508 767 7278
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 16:24:23 -0500
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Carl Schulkin
Subject: Re: Tracey's Thoughts on Multiple Voices and Narrative
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Tracey,
I appreciate your thoughts on multiple voices and who should take
responsibility for providing a narrative thread in a survey course. I agree
with your idea and Don's that we should expose students to multiple voices
and let them wrestle with making sense of them. However, in a high school
classroom, I believe that you must carefully prepare the groundwork for
doing so. In fact, I might be bold enough to assert that it may be more
difficult to lay that groundwork with high school students than it is to get
them to appreciate multiple voices once that groundwork has been laid.
Perhaps I may be somewhat traditional in my basic approach, but I
believe that in a high school survey course, the instructor must take the
initial responsibility for providing a narrative thread and the basic
context for exploring complex issues of race, class and gender. Personally,
I find that I have better resources to introduce my students to issues of
race and class than I have for issues relating to gender. I am not
comfortable, particularly at the beginning of the year, with immersing my
students in primary sources without having established a specific context or
contexts within which they might interpret those sources. Once they have
the context, the rest of the process is much easier. Then they can begin to
assume greater responsibility, analyze sources critically, and begin
constructing alternative narratives. In that regard, your example of Jo Ann
Robinson resonated loudly. By that point in the year, my students are ready
to see that the Civil Rights Movement looks very different when you present
her perspective and that of women such as Ella Baker rather than seeing the
movement through the eyes of the usual textbook account.
Thanks again for your thought provoking comments. I am finding them
very helpful in rethinking my assumptions.
Carl
=========================================================================
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 19:02:23 EDT
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: SRSchwartz@AOL.COM
Subject: Re: Tracey's Thoughts on Multiple Voices and Narrative
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
Hello to all:
Just to add another "glitch" to the attempt to present issues of gender in a
social studies classroom on the high school level.
I share with Carl the feeling that to some extent it is easier to present
issues of race and class than to deal with the gender issue. Part of that
problem lies in the type of textbooks our students have been handed over the
years. Looking at district level texts on the middle school level, virtually
all include constant reference to race and even to class issues. The students
have become familiar with the terminolgy, if not the content. But scan those
same lower school texts for issues related to gender and all you encounter are
very few references to roles females played -- Abigail Adams, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Eleanor Roosevelt. The student enters the high school often with the
impression (maybe not vocalized), that women and their problems, contributions
are simply add ons.
Now the results vary and my staff and I have discussed student reaction and
they fall along these lines.
1. If you are a male teacher introducing gender related problems many students
(male and female alike) openly voice the belief that you are adding such
material not out of any genuine interest - concern - educational objective,
but simply to satisfy some "female in charge up the line" or even as a result
of political pressure.
2. If you are a female teacher, many students believe that your personnal
interests drive the introduction of women's issues and they find it hard to
accept the fact that the items being discussed may be part of a department
curriculum.
Part of this is related to the fact that even in the best of high school
texts, issues of gender are "add-on's" and when duplicated materials are
produced, the students take that as an unstated message that it is less
important. After all, they seem to reason, if the issue of gender was so
important, then why wasn't it part of the $55 text they receive in class?
Sincere explanations help to break down these beliefs, but they do color
attempts to introduce women's issues.
On the positive side, the lessons found to grab students, male and female the
best, are those related to Senaca Falls (especially juxtaposed against the
Declaration), the period surrounding the growth of labor unions and the
Triangle Fire and the role of women in WWII and in the post war years.
=========================================================================
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 23:18:34 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: "Nancy G. Rosoff"
Subject: integrating women into the high school curriculum
Hello all--I've just gotten caught up on the recent postings. I agree that
it is difficult to incorporate the history of women (as well as all the other groups left out of the traditional narrative) into the curriculum without seeming to be adding on. In some ways, however, I would suggest that this can have a positive effect, if uses such moments to discuss with students how history has been written, focusing on whose stories have been included or ignored.
In terms of specific texts, one of my favorites to use is a chapter from Wheeler and Becker, *Discovering the American Past* (published by Houghton Mifflin); the chapter uses advertisements from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to raise questions about how such documents reflected and shaped people's attitudes. The chapter provides historical context as well as suggestions for questions to use to analyze the documents--gender roles provide one of the suggested avenues of investigation. I have used this piece with students of all levels in 11th grade classes.
In closing, I would add that our dilemma reflects that of the hitorical profession as a whole--the attempt to incorporate the insights of recent shcolarship to create an inclusive story of the past without such a narrative becoming so fragmented as to be useless.
Nancy G. Rosoff
Great Valley High School
Malvern, PA
=========================================================================
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 22:59:26 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Howard Lurie
Subject: Re: Texts and Contexts in Women's History
Comments: To: Tracey Weis
A Reply to Tracy Weiss and the related response...
Teaching the history of women and their experiences can be both immensely rewarding,
and profoundly confusing, as many of us have encountered. Perhaps it's a question
of the ultimate context: that uneasy silence in class when we and our students
begin unwrapping the meaning of gender, both today and in the past.
I have found that my students seem to have a natural inclination to engage
these issues at a more deeper level, and with a much greater attention to
detail. Because of this, I remind them of what the quote I use from L.P. Hartley to start my
classes: "the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."
Thus, I remind them that our gendered identities of the late 1990s very likely
color our perceptions of gendered identities of the 1830s, 1380s, 1920s etc.
So, this is what I mean by the "ultimate context"; these are connections
that all of our students can make, and oftentimes feel strongly about.
So what to do? I have found, along the lines of Bill and Tracey, that context
is key. I like to have my students be able to recognize and understand
the range of ideas associated with women at any particular moment. So for instance,
I'll divide a class into several teams, and distribute several key documents,
but from a range of views, eg Emma Willard and Mary Lyon on the goals of
education, along with Catherine Beecher on household economy. The key point
I think, is for students to understand the fluid nature of these debates,
and thus to appreciate, as we do today, that there has always been a vigorous
debate over issues of gender, work, education, healthcare, and suffrage.
The same can hold true with New Media resources. Again, I've used John McClymer's sources
at http://www.assumption.edu/whw/ in conjunction with the daguerrotype collection
at the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/daghome.html
to bring visual resources to bear on building the same type of appreciation
for the range of views, and now images, related to women of the 1830s-1850s.
For instance, the links to the Godey's Lady book and the issues around Bloomerism
bring students closer to a first hand appreciation for the debates raised
by Beecher et. al.
At any rate, what does all this add up to? I do think the past is a foreign country
and when we confront very personal connections, such as gender, our students
need to be reminded of the intensity with which people have always considered
gender and its implications for how we live our lives.
See ya...
Howard Lurie
Tech Coord/ History Teacher
Mount Greylock Regional H.S.
Williamstown, Mass.
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 07:44:36 -0600
Reply-To: gibsonn@asms1X.dsc.k12.ar.us
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Neal Gibson
Organization: AR School for Math & Science
Subject: And now for something completely different
Greetings:
I agree that the problems associated with gender issues in the
classroom is context and language. I believe it is not acceptable to
simply produce a list of female names that should be famous and talk
about them. That's simply the same ol' "Dead White Male History"
replaced with "Dead White Female History."
As an alternative I have my students read from Camille Paglia's
Sexual Personae. I know that this is a very controversial book and
that many take exception to her ideas, but it is amazing the
discussion that this book can stimulate. One of her theses is that
at the root of gender issues is, amazingly enough, sex, and that a
major shortcoming of discussions about women's issues in the past is
that this has been entirely overlooked. While one may take
exception to any or all of her other ideas in this book, that one
alone is worthy of a little discussion. Might it help explain why we
have so little discussion of gender issues? Goodness knows that any
discussion of sex is difficult--just ask Bill Clinton.
So at the risk of sounding like a rube and touching off a firestorm
of criticism for this proposition, I encourage teachers to check out
what she has to say. And please don't go off on both her and I
unless you've actually read what she has to say.
Neal Gibson
Arkansas School for Mathematics and Sciences
GIBSONN@ASMS1X.DSC.K12.AR.US
HTTP://ASMS.K12.AR.US
501-622-5403
=========================================================================
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1998 10:25:04 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Gerda Lerner
Subject: Gerda Lerner's Response 9/28
Dear colleagues:
I'm glad to see our discussion is taking off insuch interesting
directions. I admire the thoughtfulness and intensity with which all of
you approach your preparation as classroom teachers. Great. Wish most
academics did the same...
In response to Tracy Weis and those who answered her: I agree with
Weis' approach. The example she gives illustrates one way of giving context
to primary texts. I believe the responsibility for doing so rests entirely
with the teacher. History is not ONE approved narrative, despite the way
textbooks present it as though it were. The past is no neater than the
present. Conflicting voices clamor for attention, conflicting viewpoints
assert their claims. What we must teach students is how to make choices in
the present and in the future; how to analyze conflicting facts and draw
some conclusions from them, and above all, we must teach them what are the
consequences of historical decisions. Ex. When the Virginia House Assembly
in 1831 decided not only NOT to abolish slavery, but to tighten
restrictions on slaves, outlaw the teaching of them to read and write, and
when the rest of the South constrained freedom of the press on the
subjectof slavery, the consequences were to polarize Southern opinion, make
it impossible for alternatives fo slavery to be seriously considered, and
thus make civil war the most likely outcome.
What to do about student resistance? I have always found that
students are willing to accept the teachers' lead if the teacher is clear
in her own mind what she wants to say and if she presents her own biases
openly. If students don't want to hear about women or gender, I usually
answer that women are 51% of the population and that I feel an obligation
to teach not the history of half the population , but that of the whole. I
also have always announced right from the start, that questions about women
will be part of all the tests given in the class. If I feel comfortable
with what I present, the students usually do, too, even if there was
original resistance.
It is for this reason that I feel approaching our own preparation
by the use of analytical questions is most helpful. It forces us -the
teachers - to re-think the way we present the total narrative. It may
require us to do a little more secondary reading that we have been trained
to do. If we teach "the Progressive Period" with the usual emphasis on
"Industrialization" we might, in preparation, ask ourselves: "What was the
impact of Industrialization on women? What motivated women's decisions to
become workers? In what ways did women act differently than did men ?" This
would lead us to consider not only "women in the work force," but the
impact of industrialization on housekeeping ( gas light, indoor plumbing,
indoor water supply), the effect of I. on infant mortality and women's
longevity, and the development of public institutions, such as
kindergartens and after-school centers. This would lead us to consider the
enormous importance of women's clubs and their community-building work.
If we thought of it that way, we might be able to develop some
teaching units encompassing women's struggle for the ten hour day, for
unionization, for safe milk, for decent housing. We might focus on some
personalities, such as Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, and some of the black
club women leaders. The outcome of discussions based on such a unit would
lead to another analytic question:
What and who determines what we consider important in history? Wars
and economic development? The development of social and welfare
institutions? The education and welfare of children? Why are the latter two
considered 'women's issues?'
What would history be like if it were seen through the eyes of
women and ordered by values which they define?
Multivocal text, yes. That includes and always should include, an
equal number of women's voices on any subject under consideration.
A successful teaching strategy used by some highschool teachers was
to give a final group assignment. Students are asked to construct a
mythical diary of a woman of the past, the dating of the diary is left to
the teacher's selection. The diary is to be written as much as possible in
the language appropriate to the period. Individual students can work on
certain aspects of the diary or the work can be divided up into periods in
the diarist's life. Students are asked to footnote every event and
assertion and in the process of deciding on "typicality" learn to verify
and to make judgements about historical sources.
I can imagine a useful way to use this technique would be to have
one group of students do a woman's diary, another a man's of the same
period. It would be well to let the boys work on the woman's diary and the
girls on the man's. A class discussion of the problems and findings would
illlustrate "gender" and make it come alive for the students.
I look forward to your reactions to the above.
Best regards,
Gerda Lerner
=========================================================================
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 21:38:11 -0400
Reply-To: Forum on Women's History
Sender: Forum on Women's History
From: Victoria Straughn
Subject: Women's History in the High School
Although this is the last official day for the Women's History Forum, I
want to say "hello" to everyone who has been writing, and thank you for
sharing ideas. I am a high school history teacher in Madison, WI, and
have been teaching a course in American women's history since 1982. When
you speak of resistance to the subject, it evokes many memories.
I have lots of things to say about resistance to women's history in
the high school, but Professor Lerner's response to the question
is, I think, the most important one. We have to be the leaders in demon-
strating the value of including women's experiences in the study of history.
After all these years of teaching a course in women's history, I am happy
to report that there is a strong acceptance for the course. I currently
have 60 students (2 semesters), both males and females, and an overwhelmingly
positive response to the course ("best in the school," etc.). My school
is in an east-side working class neighborhood in Madison. The University
community is quite distant, geographically and psychologically, from this
neighborhood. I say these things to discount a potential assumption that
because this is Madison, there is a ready & willing audience for such a
course. That was certainly not the case for my school.
I have been teaching World History for 16 years, but as of last Spring, I was
also asked to teach a U.S. Survey course for 9th grade. In both courses I
continue to meet resistance to the inclusion of women, BUT NEVER FROM FEMALES.
Those who are willing to speak out against sex equity in history are always male.
That has not changed in 16 years. I take the challenging statement ("Why are
we always studying women?" or "This seems more like a women's history than a
World History course") as an excellent opportunity to explain the very things
Professor Lerner brought up in her response (51% of the population/perspective
of women needed too/many voices). I admit that from my perspective, I think
I'm not doing a very good job, because women still don't have 50% of the story.
It's a great chance to have a conversation with students about all the questions
we can raise if we wonder about women's experiences.
Finally, I have to thank my wonderful professors of women's history at UW, who
challenged me to bring women's history to the high school curriculum and
who supported my ideas. Professor Lerner's conceptualization of women's
history as asking new and different questions still informs my lesson-planning,
just as it did when I first started. She taught us to get beyond the
Contribution Level of women's history. This is hard work because the traditional
U.S. history course in high school is shaped by a textbook, and by a set of
Standards or test questions.
P.S.: In my Women's History course, I use INVENTING THE AMERICAN WOMAN (Glenda
Riley) and BLACK WOMEN IN WHITE AMERICA (Gerda Lerner) as the two primary texts.
Riley's overview of American women's history is the only one I have found that
would work with my high schoolers other than Hymowitz's 1972 HISTORY OF WOMEN
IN AMERICA, which does not include the last 3 decades.