HIS 310 Daughters of Liberty, Suffragists, and Feminists: The Story of Women in America
"Remember the ladies," Abigail Adams wrote her husband John, reminding him to include the rights of women among the goals of the American Revolution. Although often viewed in a more modern context, the quest for women’s rights in America has existed since the nation’s founding. This course will follow the lives of American women from pre-contact Native society through the modern day. It will explore a variety of themes connected to gender, race, and status by observing the lives of women within diverse societies. In doing so, students will learn to view the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s against the foundations of the nineteenth and early twentieth century suffragists and the Revolutionary-era Daughters of Liberty and Republican Womanhood. From the witches of Salem to Susan B. Anthony to Gloria Steinem, this course overall aims to tell the story of women in America.