History 3813: Gendered history: Women in Newfoundland and Labrador
(Slot 3)
Instructor:
Terry Bishop Stirling
Course Description:
History 3813 examines the experiences of women in Newfoundland and Labrador with an
emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It explores the interaction of women’s lives,
and the province’s social, political and economic history. Topics to be covered include work
(paid and unpaid); childbearing and child rearing; immigration and emigration; political activity;
and legal status.
Evaluation:
Class Participation
Document Assignment
Progress Report on Research paper
Research paper
Final Exam
10%
25%
10%
25%
30%
100%
Format:
Three classes per week comprised of lectures and discussions.
Texts:
Kealey, Linda (ed.) Pursuing Equality: Historical Perspectives on Women in
Newfoundland and Labrador (1993)
Carmelita McGrath, Barabara Neis and Marilyn Porter (eds.) Their Lives and
Times: Women in Newfoundland and Labrador, A Collage (1995)
Students will also read secondary sources available online, on reserve or in the
Centre for Newfoundland Studies. Short primary documents will also be
distributed in class or made available on D2L.
Class participation grade
You will be evaluated based on general class participation, and particularly on your contribution
to class discussions of assigned readings.
Assignments
Expectations for the two major assignments will be discussed in class and posted on D2L
You are responsible for bolded secondary sources and primary sources listed under
headings “Source discussion” (these are all quite short). Short primary sources will be
distributed in class or posted on D2L for class discussion. Other readings are
supplementary. If you miss a class you might want to do some extra reading.
Supplementary readings, as well as the course bibliography, are also good starting points
for your two assignments.
Week One
Introduction to Course/First Women
Newfoundland and Labrador History and Women’s History: Intersections, Disjunctions and
Gaps
Kealey, Linda (ed.) Pursuing Equality “Introduction”
“Soe longe as there comes no Women”: Anti-settlement laws: myth and reality
Barbara Neis, “A Collage Within a Collage: Original traces of First Nations Women,” in Lives
and Times
Source discussion: Archaeology, History and European accounts of First Nations.
Primary Source: Bishop Inglis’ interview with Shanawdithit (1827)
Week Two
Women in NL in the 17th and 18th centuries/ Discussion of Primary source
assignment/archives class
The first women settlers
Women as cultural intermediaries: agency and its limits in the life of an Inuit woman
Taylor, J. Garth, “The two Worlds of Mikak,” Part I, The Beaver, 1983. Vol. 314 (3) and
Part II, The Beaver, 1984, Vol.134 (4)
Stopp, Marianne, “Eighteenth Century Inuit in Labrador,” Arctic, 62.1 (March, 2009)
Pope, Peter, Fish into Wine, pp. 296-302 “Women Would Be Necessary Heere”
Kealey, Linda (ed.) Annotated Bibliography of Women’s History Sources in Newfoundland
Archives (St. John’s) 1996
Week Three
Women and work in the 19th century
Porter, Marilyn, “She was Skipper of the Shore Crew: Notes on the Sexual Division of
Labour in Newfoundland,” in Lives and Times
Forestell, Nancy and Jessie Chisholm, “Working Class Women as Wage Earners in St. John’s,
Newfoundland, 1890-1921,” in Petra Tancred-Sheriff (ed.) Feminist Research: Prospect and
Retrospect (1988)
McCann, Phillip, “Class, Gender and Religion in Newfoundland Education, 1836-1901,”
Historical Studies in Education (1989)
Week Four Gender, class and ethnicity in the 19th century
Irish and English women in NL
Cadigan, Sean, “Whipping them into Shape: State refinement of Patriarchy among
Conception Bay Fishing Families, 1787-1825,” in Lives and Times
Keough, Willeen, “The Riddle of Peggy Mountain: Regulation of Irish Women’s Sexuality
on the Southern Avalon, 1750-1860,” Acadiensis. Vol.31, no.2 (Spring, 2002)
Source Discussion: Legal records, oral history and oral tradition. Reading: Keough,
Willeen, “Bringing ordinary lives out of the shadows: court records, oral history, and Irish
women on the Southern Avalon,” Newfoundland Ancestor, Winter 1999.
Week Five Contesting Gender: Patriarchy, Protest and Reform
Daughters, wives and mothers: family law
The suffrage movement
Johnson, Trudi, Women and Inheritance in Nineteenth Century Newfoundland,” Journal
of the Canadian Historical Association, 2002, 13, pp.1-22.
Johnson, Trudi, “‘A Matter of custom and convenience? Marriage law in 19th Century
Newfoundland,” Newfoundland Studies, Fall, 2003.
Cullum and Baird, “A Woman’s Lot” (Focus especially on sections on 19th century)
Duley, Margot, “ ‘The Radius of her influence for Good’ The Rise and Triumph of the
Women’s Suffrage Movement in Newfoundland, 1900-1925,” in Pursuing Equality
Film: “The Untold Story”
Week Six
Women and Work in the early 20th century
White, Linda, “Who’s in Charge Here? Hospital School of Nursing, St. John’s
Newfoundland, 1903-1930,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History (1994)
“‘I knew I would have to make a choice: Voices of Women Teachers from Newfoundland and
Labrador,” Newfoundland Studies, Fall1995. Vol.11, no.2.
Forestell, Nancy, “Times were Hard: The pattern of Women’s Paid labour in St. John’s
between the Two World Wars,” in Lives and Times
Botting, Ingrid, “Domestic servants in Grand Falls: Migration and recruitment prior to the
Second World War,” Newfoundland Quarterly, Fall, 2007
Week Seven Childbearing, Child rearing and Community in Newfoundland in the 19th and
early 20th centuries
Benoit, Cecelia, “Mothering in a Newfoundland Community: 1900-1940,” in Katherine
Arnup et.al. (eds.) Delivering Motherhood: Maternal Ideologies and Practices in the 19th and
20th Centuries. 1990
Buchanan, Roberta, “Autobiography as History,” in Lives and Times
Murray, Hilda Chaulk. More than 50%; Women’s Life in a Newfoundland Outport, 1900-1950
(1979)
Wheaton, Carla, “Women and Water Street: Constructing Gender in Department Stores in
St.John’s, 1892-1949, in Linda Cullum, Carmelita McGrath and Marilyn Porter (eds) Women in
Labrador. Weather’s Edge: A Compendium, 2006.
Source discussion: Using women’s life stories.
Readings: Goudie, Elizabeth. Woman of Labrador (1973)
.
Week Eight
Women and World War One
Margot Duley, “The Unquiet Knitters of Newfoundland: From Mothers of the Regiment to
Mothers of the Nation,” in Sarah Glassford and Amy Shaw (eds.) A Sisterhood of Suffering
and Servie: Women and Girls of Canada and Newfoundland During the First Word War.
2012
Terry Bishop Stirling, “’Such Sights One Will Never Forget’:Newfoundland Women and
Overseas Nursing in the First World War,” in Glassford and Shaw, Sisterhood of Suffering.
Rompkey, Bill and Bert Riggs, Your Daughter Fannie: The War Letters of Francis Cluett, VAD
(2006).
Source Discussion: Women’s letters
Selection of Women’s War letters
Week Nine Women in the Inter-war period
Women’s work, paid and unpaid
Women and the depression
Cullum, Linda, “‘A Woman’s Place’: The Work of Two Women’s Voluntary
Organizations in Newfoundland, 1934-1941,” in McGrath et. al. Their Lives and Times
Bishop Stirling, Terry, “Volunteerism in the 1920s: The Child Welfare Association and
NONIA,” in Burford, Gale (ed.) Ties that Bind: An Anthology of Social Work and Social Welfare
in Newfoundland and Labrador, 1997.
Week Ten
World War Two and its Aftermath
The impact of the “Friendly Invasion”
Casey, G.J. and Hanrahan, Maura, “Roses and Thistles: Second World War Brides in
Newfoundland,” Newfoundland Studies Vol.10, 2 (Fall,1994)
Benoit, Cecelia, “Urbanizing Women Military Fashion: The Case of Stephenville Women,”
in Lives and Times
Film: Seven Brides for Uncle Sam
Week Eleven Economic and Social Change: gender continuity and change
The Confederation campaign
Women and the transition to the frozen fish industry
Education and the professions
Cullum, Linda, “ ‘It was a Woman’s Job, I’spose, pickin dirt outa berries’: negotiating
gender, work and wages at Job brothers, 1940-1950,” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies,
23,2 (Fall, 2008)
Heath Rodgers, Theresa, “Work, Household Economy and Social Welfare: The Transition from
Traditional to Modern Lifestyles in Bonavista, 1930-1960,” Thesis (History) Memorial
University, 2000
Wright, Miriam, “Women, Men and the Modern Fishery: Images of Gender in
Government Plans for the Canadian Atlantic Fishery,” in Their Lives and Times
McCay, Bonnie J. “Fish Guts, Hair Nets and Unemployment Stamps: Women and Work in Cooperative Fish Plants, in Lives and Times
Week Twelve The Modern Women’s Movement
Anger, Dorothy, C. McGrath and S. Pottle, “Women and Work in Newfoundland: “Background
Report to the Royal Commission on Employment and Unemployment”
Pope, Sharon Gray and Jane Burnham, “The Modern Women’s Movement in
Newfoundland and Labrador,” in Pursuing Equality