Women’s Activism and Social Change in
the Twentieth Century U.S.
Fall 2008 AMST/FGSS/Hist 4141-101
Mondays 2:30- 4:25 in Lincoln Hall B08
Professor Tamar Carroll
Email: twc57@cornell.edu
Office: 363 McGraw Hall
Office Phone: 607-254-1275; Home Phone: 734-330-5991 (only if needed, email is preferred)
Office Hours: Mondays 1-2:30, Wed. 3:45-5 and by appointment
Please note: No office hours on Wed., Oct. 1, or on Wed., Nov. 5.
Course Description:
This seminar critically examines women’s leadership in movements for social change. By completing reading and writing assignments, you will learn about the history of women’s activism in the twentieth century, and improve your own critical thinking and writing skills. This course will prepare you to write a high-quality, original research paper on a topic of your choice, related to an aspect of women’s activism in the twentieth century U.S. During the term, we will examine activists from a variety of movements including those mobilizing on issues relating to economic justice, race relations, sexual identity, peace, gender equality, public health, the family, and social welfare. We will compare and contrast these movements and leaders in an effort to reach generalizable conclusions as well as to identify the specific historical contexts that shaped each.
Careful attention will be paid to the political awakening of female leaders, the communities and constituencies they served and drew their power from, the patterns, styles, and skills of women in leadership positions, and the unique challenges and rewards these women experienced because of their gender, as well as their race and class. Even though women’s leadership has traditionally been undervalued or gone unrecognized altogether by contemporaries and historians alike, this course will demonstrate that women have left an inspiring and instructional legacy of leadership for us to study. Because both women’s history and the history of social movements are often omitted in accounts of the American past, this course also requires you to share your original research in some kind of public forum, either on campus or in the larger Ithaca community. The creative format in which you present your research and the forum you choose to present in are up to you – it could be a visit to a middle-school class, a bulletin board in the student union, a discussion section in your dorm – but you will report back on your public history project on the last day of class.
Reading will consist of a book a week in the first half of the course, and will taper off during the second half of the course in order to allow students to pursue independent research at one of the several excellent archives located on campus or in the local area. Students should first read the questions listed on the syllabus before beginning the week’s reading, and to take notes on those questions as well as their own questions and thoughts, in order to come to class prepared to discuss the readings. The questions on the syllabus may also help guide students’ analysis of primary source documents for their research papers.
Students are also encouraged to share relevant current events and news items with the class, and to attend campus programming related to women’s history. Doing so and reporting back to the class will earn students additional class participation credit. During the first month of the term, all students will write a 5 page essay comparing the first two books we read. In addition, students will complete a series of short assignments, including a source document analysis and an annotated bibliography, designed to prepare them for the final assignment, a 20-25 page research paper based on primary sources. Through class library visits, individual meetings with the instructor, and peer review, students will be introduced to techniques of archival research and successful historical writing. Through re-writing, students will have the opportunity to create a research paper that they are proud of and which they could use as a writing sample for graduate school, or, in some cases, submit for publication.
The following books are required reading, and are available for purchase at the campus bookstore. A copy of each book has also been placed in course reserves in room 305 of Ohlin Library. Two of the books are also available in an electronic format through the library course reserves section of our course blackboard site. You will need to enroll yourself in the blackboard site, the course ID of which is: Hist4141-Carroll-Fall2008. Under the course reserves section, you will also find links to several assigned articles and web-based historical projects, which are also required reading. Please note that we will follow the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, format for citations, some of which is available online at http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html. However, for detailed instructions on how to format footnotes and bibliographies, you will want to avail yourself of the library’s copy of the Chicago Manual or purchase your own. Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style (fourth edition) remains an invaluable guide to clear, lively writing, and students will find it a helpful resource as they sharpen their prose.
Books:
Annelise Orleck, "Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women
and Working-Class Politics in the
United States, 1900-1965," (University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
Amy Swerdlow, "Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical
Politics in the
1960s," (University of Chicago Press, 1993).
Barbara Ransby, "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical
Democratic Vision,"
(University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
Anne Enke, "Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist
Activism,"
(Duke University Press, 2007).
Donald Critchlow, "Phyllis Schlafley and Grassroots Conservatism: A
Woman's Crusade,"
(Princeton University Press, 2005).
Grade Breakdown:
Class attendance and participation (including contribution to peer review and any extra credit earned through attendance at outside lectures, etc.): 20 percent
Please note: Missing more than one class meeting without a written excuse will negatively affect your grade.
Five-page, Compare and Contrast Paper: 15 percent – optional rewrite is available
Public History Project: 20 percent
Research Paper Project (includes source assignment paper, bibliography, first draft, and final draft) : 45 percent
Statement on Plagiarism: Plagiarism is bad writing and intellectual theft and WILL NOT BE TOLERATED in this course. Please review “Recognizing and Avoiding Plagiarism,” at http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm. When in doubt, ASK. It is YOUR responsibility not to plagiarize. If you do plagiarize, be prepared to fail this course.
Students can and should find me to discuss any aspect of the course during my office hours (no appointment necessary, just drop by my office) or via e-mail. We can schedule appointments for other times as well. I generally check e-mail at least once every day and I give priority to students’ questions regarding class material.
Course schedule:
Please note: I reserve the right to make changes to the syllabus and the course schedule as needed to optimize students’ learning. Readings are DUE on the day they are listed on the syllabus. Please come to class prepared to discuss the assigned reading and the reading questions listed on the syllabus. Whenever possible, bring the reading to class with you, along with notes, questions, and comments that you have thought about as you prepared for our discussion. All films shown in class will be placed on reserve in Uris library. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to view the film shown that day.
Sept. 1: Introductions: What is a social movement? How have women
participated in social movements?
Reading questions: What are the defining characteristics of social movements? What is a leader? How might leadership in social movements be different then leadership in other types of settings or organizations? What does being a “leader” in social movements mean? What situations, experiences, and resources are necessary to produce an effective leader? What roles do leaders play in social movements? Are there “types” of leaders or a set of specific leadership roles that consistently need to be filled in social movements? What is the difference between a mobilizer and an organizer? Where do women generally fit in these roles?
Sept. 8: Labor Union Women’s Activism
Assignment: Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire web exhibit, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/.
Special Guest: Archivist
Patrizia Sione from the Kheel Center Archives of the ILR will visit our class during the second
hour and share information on primary source collections related to women’s
labor activism that you can use in your research papers.
Reading Questions: How did women define themselves? What groups did they identify with and did their identifications change over the course of their lives or activism? How did their personal identities shape their activism? What groups or identities appear most crucial to bringing/pushing women into activism and leadership roles? How did personal or group identity shape what roles women played in their movements for social change? Did the time period(s) also shape identities and constituencies? What held these groups (or constituencies) together over time?
Sept. 15:
Peace Movements
Assignment: Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace. Note: Chapter 2 is optional, not required.
In-class Film: clips from The Atomic Café, produced and directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty. New York, N.Y. : First Run Features, 1993.
Reading Questions: When and how did women
become aware of the problems they would later address in their activism? Did it happen in a moment (what feminists
called a “click”) or was it a process?
Were there crucial experiences, events, or relationships that led to
their awakenings? What were the
ideologies that supported women’s realizations and where did they learn
these? How did women actually go about
translating ideas into activism? What
was happening in this country or the particular region, state, or community
that might have nurtured political awakenings?
Sept. 22: Visit to Carl A. Kroch Library of Rare and
Manuscript Collections/Human Sexuality Collection – MEET AT LIBRARY
5 page comparison of Orleck and Swerdlow books due at the
start of class
Assignment: There is no reading due this week, but you are encouraged to begin exploring archival collections and selecting a research paper topic and source base, and you must select a primary source to analyze for the brief source analysis paper.
Sept. 29: Women in the Black Freedom Movement
Assignment: Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement
In-class Film: Fundi:
The Life of Ella Baker
Reading Questions: Where and how did women learn the nuts and bolts of activism? How did they acquire the skills necessary for leadership? Were there skills from other aspects of these women’s lives that they could refashion into tools for social change? You might consider both positive and negative experiences that built women’s leadership repertoire. How did the process of acquiring these skills shape women’s activism and the progress of the movements? What factors shaped where leaders learned their craft? Race? Region? Class? Ethnicity? Gender?
Oct. 6: Second Wave Feminism
Assignment: Anne Enke, Finding the Movement
Source Analysis Paper Due
Reading Questions: What were the tangible and intangible resources – including space -- that supported women’s activism in general and their leadership roles in particular? How might the resources women brought to movements have been different from men’s? How did women actively cultivate these resources? Which were the easiest to mobilize? Which were the most difficult? How did the available resources shape the leadership roles of women? What sustained women over years and even decades of activism?
Oct. 13 No class Fall
Break
Oct. 20: Conservative Women’s Activism
Assignment: Donald Critchlow, Phyllis Schlafley and Grassroots Conservatism
Research Prospectus Due
Sign up for individual meeting time
In-class Film:
With God on Our Side: The Rise of the
Religious Right in America. Episode 3:
We are Family
Reading Questions: What tactics did women use to open up leadership opportunities for themselves or others? What tactics did they use once in leadership roles? How did these tactics differentiate leaders from the “foot soldiers” of the movement? Where did women learn these tactics? How did they reshape them to particular circumstances? How does the activism and leadership of women in right-wing movements compare to what we have studied thus far? You might look back at the themes we have already covered for specific points on which to base your comparison. What do you think accounts for the similarities and/or differences you have noted?
Oct. 27: Individual Meetings during class time
Nov. 3: Individual Meetings during class time
Nov. 10: Community Activism and Coalition Building
Assignment:
Xiaolan Bao, “How Did
Chinese Women Garment Workers in New York City Forge a Successful Class-Based
Coalition during the 1982 Contract Dispute?,” Women and Social Movements in the United States 9:1 (March 2005);
Maylei Blackwell, “Contested Histories: Las
Hijas de Chauhtemoc, Chicana Feminisms, and Print Culture in the Chicano
Movement, 1968-1973,” in Gloria Arrenondo et al, eds., Chicana Feminisms: A Critical Reader, (Duke 2003), pp. 59-89; and
Nancy Naples, “Women’s Community Activism: Exploring the Dynamics of Politicization
and Diversity,” in Naples, ed., Community
Activism and Feminist Politics (Routledge, 1998), pp. 327-349.
Reading questions: What have been the greatest obstacles for women in leadership positions? What were the sources of these challenges (think about internal and external factors)? Where have women in leadership positions made the greatest headway? Why? What specific ways have women tried to overcome the challenges and capitalize on the successes? How did these strategies fit with the time period(s)? How did women’s ideas about leadership, definitions of leadership and identity of leaders evolve over time? When/how/why did women shift leadership roles and styles? How much and how did factors such as age, style and progress of the social movement, and the historical period shape these shifts?
Nov. 17: Workshop Papers
Nov. 24: Workshop Papers
Dec. 1: Share public history projects
Dec. 10 : Final Papers Due on Blackboard by 5 pm