General Education Annual Course Assessment Form
Course Number/Title: History 153 ( History of Women in Europe)
GE Area V
Results reported for AY 2010-2011 # of sections: One
# of Instructors: One
Course Coordinator: Mary Pickering
E-mail: Mary.Pickering@sjsu.edu
Department Chair: Patricia Evridge Hill
College: Social Sciences
Part 1: To be completed by the course coordinator:
1. What SLO(s) were assessed for the course during the AY?
SLO 2: Identify the historical context of ideas and cultural traditions outside the U.S. and
how they have influenced American culture.
2. What were the results of the assessment of this course? What were the lessons learned
from the assessment?
As a specialist in European intellectual history, I devote most of the course to ideas
and cultural traditions outside the United States. Intellectual history is a tough pill for
students to swallow, for thinking about ideas requires them to cease believing history is all
about political events, such as wars and treaties, and to investigate the ways in which
concepts affect behavior. This challenging task of making students think in a new manner is
particularly important in women’s history, where historians devote themselves to examining
how women are socialized into accepting certain attitudes and behavioral patterns that
reinforce their subordinate status. Hopefully, students also learn how men imbibe different
prompts from their historical context—prompts that reinforce their position on top. Both
religion and science are essential in teaching behavior, for people frequently allude to “God”
or “Nature” to justify gender roles. Thus this course covers in depth religious and scientific
ideas as well as their effects on political models, which often reflect and/or reinforce relations
between men and women. For example, the notion of a patriarchal family buttressed the
absolutist state, where the king was analogous to a father; both fathers and male monarchs
had the final say over how matters relating to the family or state were run.
Because the United States is part of Western civilization, it has been heavily
influenced by the ideas and cultural traditions of Europe. I make constant reference to our
country in my lectures and discussion in order to enhance the “relevance” of the course to
students’ lives. In my lecture on ancient Rome, I refer to the ideal of the Roman matron as
having had a powerful impact on the founding fathers and the early years of the American
Republic. She represented the frugal housewife and devoted mother. I pull material from the
guest lecture given by our former American history professor, Caroline Winterer, now at
Stanford. She spoke at length about the importance of the Roman matron in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. When we cover courtly love in the Middle Ages, we discuss the
problem of putting women on a pedestal in terms of making them prisoners of the male
gaze—a problem that continues to this day. In the lecture on the Reformation, I ask students
to reflect on the religion of the American abolitionists and to ponder the importance of
Protestantism in the launching of American reform movements. When we cover the French
Revolution, I get students to think about how unconventional women behind prominent men
are often vilified as sexual deviants and power mongers. Both Marie Antoinette and Hilary
Clinton faced accusations of lesbianism and gross ambition. Other topics that invite
comparison between women’s experiences in Europe and the United States include the
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struggle for education, the pursuit of the vote, the battle for equal opportunities in the work
place, the image of liberty, the problem of immigration, and reproductive rights.
Students are assessed via the grades on their oral reports, their midterm and final
exams, and their two papers. The oral reports improved this semester because I made students
bring in at least one book or article and evaluate their secondary sources. The students were
able to delve more deeply into their topics, which included the feminist theorist Simone de
Beauvoir, the apostle Paul, and the Cartesian philosopher Poullain de la Barre. Most students
received an A or B on their oral reports. The first paper was a comparison of two primary
sources, which the students can choose. Often the primary sources are excerpts from the
writings of a philosopher. Out of twenty-seven students, ten rewrote their papers after seeing
the poor grades they received. In the end, one-third of the students received an A, one-third a
B, and the rest grades of C or below. The second paper was a comparison of two movies.
Students had to analyze how the directors portrayed women in the films. Because this paper
is easier than the first one, about half of the students received an A of some sort. I always
wonder about the value of this assignment. Yet in the end I think it is a good one because it
teaches students to think more critically about the ways in which visual culture shapes
behavior, including their own. As for the exams, the first one covers history up to 1800
requires students to evaluate the importance of religion in hindering and enhancing the
advancement of women. Religion is a good topic especially because religious discourse
always has a prominent role in political discourse in the United States. Yet I am always
surprised by how little thought students give to religion. When I asked students to discuss the
identity of Gluckel of Hameln, whose autobiography they read, only half of the students
included in their essay the importance of her Jewish faith and the persecutions she
encountered because of it. In another essay, only one-quarter of the students could elaborate
on the importance of Protestantism in opening up opportunities for women. In the final exam,
religion popped up again in one essay asking students to compare France and England. This
time half of the students commented on the difference between a Catholic and Protestant
country in terms of women’s issues. About half also noted the importance of liberalism in
promoting women’s suffrage. As the birthplace of liberalism, England witnessed a stronger
movement among middle-class women in favor of the vote. Thus women received the vote
twenty-five years earlier than women in France. Of course, the same thinking applies to the
United States where the Catholic Church and a monarchical tradition had less importance
than in France. Again, American women got the vote before French women did.
Another theme of the course that has relevance to the United States is that of
immigration. Students are asked to reflect on the experience of women immigrants in terms
of the economic hardships and racism they face in their new countries. One of the essays on
the final exam asked students to discuss this issue. Two-thirds of the class did a good job,
while one-third forgot most of the class material relating to this issue, although the week
before, they had taken a quiz on the assigned book dealing with the debate in France on Islam
and the veil. We had discussed at length how Americans with their firm belief in freedom of
religious expression would not go as far as the French in banning the headscarf and burqa in
schools and public spaces.
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3. What modifications to the course, or its assessment activities or schedule, are planned for
the upcoming year? (If no modifications are planned, the course coordinator should indicate
this.)
Students currently gain familiarity with the philosophies of great male and female
thinkers. They read Sappho, Aristotle, Plato, Jerome, Thomas Aquinas, Anna Comnena,
Alberti, Christine de Pizan, Poullain de la Barre, Condorcet, Olympe de Gouges, Mill,
Proudhon, Flora Tristan, George Sand, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Virginia Woolf, and Simone
de Beauvoir. In reading excerpts from the writing of these individuals and others, students
learn to see how their attitudes towards women are connected to their notions of the state, the
individual, religion, race, and class. I would like to add a few contemporary feminist thinkers,
such as Julia Kristeva and Luce Iragay. However, their writings are very difficult to fathom.
So I am hesitant to add them, particularly at the end of the course, when students show signs
of fatigue.
To improve the performance of students on the first paper, I delayed the date it was
due this past semester. In this way, they had more knowledge of history and could pick
primary sources from a later period. The papers were better than in the past. However, some
students pick terrible sources, ones that have no interesting relationship to the historical
context or to each other. So in the future, I will have all students turn in a proposal regarding
their paper a week before the actual paper is due in order to weed out potential problems.
Also, this past semester, I had students use Turnitin.com. As a result, students had to
paraphrase their arguments better and use Wikipedia less frequently. I was pleased with the
results of this experiment and will continue to require them to use Turnitin.com.
I would like to improve students’ understanding of the liberal tradition common to
both Great Britain and the United States. To that end, I will look for better readings on John
Locke’s and John Stuart Mill’s notions of individual freedom and their impact on women’s
history.
Other than these modifications, I have no plans to change the course. I think it
succeeds in teaching the rudiments of European history to students outside of the department
and in showing how advances in the human condition should never be taken for granted. It
urges students to take up the mantle of social justice, which is one of the missions of a
university. In so doing, the course fulfills one of the most important GE objectives, to give
students “an understanding of ethical choices inherent in human development.”
Part 2 To be completed by the department chair (with input from course coordinator as
appropriate):
(4) Are all sections of the course still aligned with the area Goals, Student Learning
Objectives (SLOs), Content, Support, and Assessment? If they are not, what actions are
planned?
Yes. PEH 9/1/11
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