HIST 276 - U.S. Women’s History to 1877

Credits: (3)
Explores the experiences of women from the colonial era to the beginnings of the women’s rights movement in the nineteenth century. It will examine the private lives of women, including marriage and family, sexuality and reproduction, and labor and education, and women’s participation in the public sphere, paying particular attention to how changing conceptions of gender have expanded or limited women’s social and cultural roles. While this course will explore the unity of women’s lives in the American past, it will also explore the ways race, ethnicity, and class have shaped women’s experiences. Students will gain an understanding of how gender was historically constructed and of important interpretive issues in early American women’s history.