I’m going to take a break from writing about feminism, autonomy, faith, and my own narcissism. (Rejoice, readers!)
I thought I might share a bit of my new and revised syllabus for my Women in American Society course. I often write about my teaching, but rarely share the details of what it is I ask my students to do.
I’ve tinkered with my syllabus many times over the years. Here’s the brief intro statement I’m now using; it’s been revised many times.
This is not a conventional history course. We will study the lives of American women in historical perspective, focusing not so much on the achievements of a few great figures, but rather upon the lives of “ordinary†people. This course will cover the history of attitudes towards gender and sexuality from the arrival of Europeans in the seventeenth century to the present. We will also examine the historical background to contemporary social issues (such as abortion, sexual harassment, anorexia/bulimia, wage disparity, pornography, the women’s movement and so forth). Particular attention will be paid to the historical construction of ideas about the female body.
We will attempt to construct a more inclusive understanding of the past, and we will discuss a variety of different definitions of what it means to be a “feministâ€. Above all, we will ask critical questions about how our culture views (and has viewed) women.
Given the amount of space I have for a short introduction, it seems to cover the basics.
I’ve changed my texts many times. My basic text this semester is a new one: Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents. It’s a substantial volume, but it’s blend of primary and secondary source material is as good as anything I’ve seen. After all, I want my students to be able to read Anne Bradstreet’s 17th century poems and Kathleen Hanna’s Riot Grrl Manifesto, as well as to be given an overview of the narrative history of the women’s movement.
I’m keeping one text as a holdover from previous semesters, and it’s one I’ve used since it first appeared: Joan Brumberg’s brilliant, indispensable, magisterial The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls. I’ve written before about the usefulness of the book, and given its brevity and its scope, it’s without question the most popular text I’ve ever assigned.
Another new text I’m using is Lynn Phillips’ Flirting with Danger: Young Women’s Reflections on Sexuality and Domination. The title makes it sound racier than it is, but it is a riveting, compelling read. It’s based on dozens of interviews that Phillips conducted in the late 1990s with an ethnically and economically diverse group of young female college students. Though there is much within its pages about sex, Phillips’ book is really more about just how complex heterosexual relationships have become in our supposedly "post-feminist" modern era. She identifies two particularly troubling discourses that are alive and thriving: the notion that female pleasure is never, ultimately, without penalty and the notion that males cannot, ultimately, be held accountable for their sexual behavior (the "bad girl" and "boys will be boys" phenomena.) It’s a disturbing, gripping text — and one that I’m confident will create much opportunity for discussion.
I don’t teach straight from the books,of course. But I do think that in gender studies courses in particular, good texts can have an enormous impact on the success of the class. All three of these books are written from a feminist perspective, as they ought to be. They don’t merely describe the past (or the present), they analyze and ultimately prescribe solutions. At its best, I think, good feminist teaching invites students to join the authors of their texts and their professors in that task of describing, analyzing, and prescribing. Ultimately, of course, the goal is to encourage young women — and young men — to rethink their understanding of gender and sexuality, and to empower (yes, overused verb) them to make different decisions within their private and public lives.
I’ll report on how these new texts go over.
What is your actual academic background? What is your graduate degree and in what? Just curious how someone becomes a gender studies teacher.
Hugo, I like you’re blog, and I’m going to continue to read it. But, I will never post on here again. The tone on the posts are just far to combatant for what I’d like to read and participate with. So, just in case you care (which is doubtful, but the internet is narcissism) I will still be reading you’re very engaging blog, just never commenting.
Antigone, I’m considering joining you. Every comments section here seems to degenerate into a fight, and even I’m starting to lose my ability to be polite. It’s a bad mindset to get drawn into.
A very interesting review of women’s studies textbooks was conducted in 2002 by Christine Stolba. I’m glad to see that you are not using any of the texts that she examined, and hopefully the level of scholarship for women’s studies texts has risen dramatically since that review was written.
I like document collections myself - there is an immediacy to the primary sources that engages the reader.
For one reason or another, I never got around to reading Blumberg’s Body Project book - will have to give it a try.
Antigone > Hugo, I like you’re blog, and I’m going to continue to read it. But, I will never post on here again. The tone on the posts are just far to combatant for what I’d like to read and participate with. So, just in case you care (which is doubtful, but the internet is narcissism) I will still be reading you’re very engaging blog, just never commenting.
BritgirlSF > Antigone, I’m considering joining you. Every comments section here seems to degenerate into a fight, and even I’m starting to lose my ability to be polite. It’s a bad mindset to get drawn into.
This troubles me since I’ve enjoyed both your posts as thoughtful and logical comment. I think both of you bring something good to the subjects being discussed here. But what I truly enjoy about Hugo’s site is that he allows divergent opinions to be presented here without the insults and fighting that are so often the norm in exchanges between Feminists and MRA’s. Or at least he really try’s to. But he walks a fine line between censorship, and deleting insulting comments. What is insulting to some, is just an opinion to other people less sensitive to the topic.
Would you rather participate in the sterile exchanges you see on many Feminists and MRA sites? Do you want to be a part of discussions where dissenting opinions are censored and only one special interest group’s rhetoric is allowed to be presented?
You are going to get trolls anywhere you go. But yes, recently the posts always seem to degenerate into who is the biggest victim and the substance of the thread is lost. These are often emotional subjects, and it is often hard to stay on topic. And lately a couple of childish loonies have been posting really insulting crap to disrupt the thread. But Hugo can’t always catch and delete every post every zealot makes. You just have to ignore them, hope Hugo deletes their comments eventually, and stick to the thread. (Something that is hard for me to do also). And try not to get mad when someone posts something you don’t agree with no matter how deeply you disagree with it.. (also hard for me at times).
But if all you want to do is discuss issues where everyone is already required to agree with you, what’s the point? How do we learn from that?
Rainbow,check out this post from January 31:
http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2005/01/i_confess_i_did.html
Hi, I’m new to this blog thing. But I thought I’d just let you know that my professor and adviser, Lynn Dumenil, co-authored Through Women’s Eyes. I took “History of American Women” with her last semester and we used the new text. I found it to be a great text, in combination with novels and articles. Good luck with your course.
Thanks, Daisy.
One of the many reasons I picked this text was the “So Cal” connections of the two editors to UCLA and Oxy.
Go Tigers!