The History of Women in Canada
Trent University, Department of History
HIST 316
Fall 2010
Peterborough
Instructor:
Dr. Alison Norman
Email:
alisonnorman@trentu.ca
Campus:
Peterborough
Office Location:
Lady Eaton College, S101.7.
Telephone:
(705)748-1011,
Ext. 7349
Office Hours:
Thursday 11am-1pm
Course Description:
This course explores selected themes in the history of Canadian Women from before the arrival of
Europeans to the beginning of the twentieth century. It compares women’s experiences as mothers,
wives, workers, immigrants, colonizers and the colonized. We will examine how their history was
shaped by social constructions of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, religion and region. The
course also looks at how the field of women’s history has developed, and how the field has shaped our
understanding of Canadian history.
I will be teaching the first half of this course, and this syllabus applies to the Fall term only.
Course Format:
Peterborough Campus:
Please check http://www.trentu.ca/admin/mytrent/Timetable/TimeTableGen0.htm to confirm
times and locations.
Type
Lecture (2 hours)
Day
Thursday
Time
9:00am-10:50am
Tutorial (1 hour)
Thursday
1:00pm, 2:00pm or
3:00pm
Location
Bata Library,
Room 103
Check the timetable
for room locations
Course Evaluation:
Type of Assignment
Seminar Participation
Historica Minute Analysis
Biography Assignment
Primary Source Assignment
In Class Test
Total
Weighting
10%
7.5%
10%
12.5%
10%
50%
Due Date
weekly
October 7
October 21
November 25
December 9
You will earn the second 50% in the second half of the course, Winter 2011.
Seminar Participation (10%)
Participation in seminars and the completion of seminar activities are the basis of the participation
grade. In seminars, you will discuss the weekly readings and relate them to course themes. You are
expected to attend lectures and seminars every week having read the assigned articles and you should
be prepared to discuss them critically. You should print the readings out and bring your notes with
you, as you will need to reference the readings in tutorial. Your grade will be based on attendance and
the quality of your tutorial discussion.
Historica Minute Analysis (7.5%) (3-4 pages)
Historica Minutes are one minute movies produced by the Historica Foundation of Canada to celebrate
Canadian history. For this first assignment, you must analyze the portrayal of First Nations women in
three short films that cover the period “pre-1600 to First Contact”. The minutes are title “Jacques
Cartier,” “Syrup,” and “Peacemaker.” Your paper must answer the following questions:
1. What are the goals of these minutes?
2. How are the women presented?
3. How does their portrayal compare to what you have learned from lecture and the readings
from Week 3?
4. Briefly describe a Minute that you would create to dramatize First Nations’ women’s
experiences in the early contact period.
DUE: October 7
Public History and Biography Assignment (10%) (3-4 pages)
Choose one of the women from the provided list and research her biography. A useful place to begin
your search is the online Dictionary of Canadian Biography, www.biographi.ca/. Write a one page
biography of the woman in question, and then assess how the story of this woman’s life has been told
by academic and public historians. How has she been remembered? Is there a mythology surrounding
her life story? How accurate do you think public perceptions of her are? Be sure to cite your
information and provide a bibliography. Public history websites, plaques and monuments etc. may be
useful sources for this assignment, but you also must use the work of academic historians.
DUE: October 21
Primary Source Assignment (12.5%) (5-6 pages)
Choose one of the provided primary documents and answer the specific questions that pertain to that
document. Documents and related questions will be posted on the course website.
DUE: November 25
2
In Class Test (10%)
A one-hour term test will be held in the last tutorial of the semester, on December 9. They will be
essay type questions, and your answers should be based on material from lecture and tutorials. You
will have choice as to which questions you answer. It is a closed book test.
University Policies
Academic Integrity:
Academic dishonesty, which includes plagiarism and cheating, is an extremely serious academic
offence and carries penalties varying from a 0 grade on an assignment to expulsion from the
University. Definitions, penalties, and procedures for dealing with plagiarism and cheating are set out
in Trent University’s Academic Integrity Policy. You have a responsibility to educate yourself –
unfamiliarity with the policy is not an excuse. You are strongly encouraged to visit Trent’s Academic
Integrity website to learn more: www.trentu.ca/academicintegrity.
Access to Instruction:
It is Trent University's intent to create an inclusive learning environment. If a student has a disability
and/or health consideration and feels that he/she may need accommodations to succeed in this course,
the student should contact the Disability Services Office (BL Suite 109, 748-1281,
disabilityservices@trentu.ca) as soon as possible. Complete text can be found under Access to
Instruction in the Academic Calendar.
Required Texts:
All of the course readings are online, through the course website. They are in a folder labelled “course
readings,” and are saved according to the author’s last name and the date of publication. Many are also
available online through the library system. It is recommended that you print the readings out every
week, but you are welcome to read them online.
Week-by-week schedule:
Week 1 (September 16)
Lecture: Introduction to the Course
Seminar: Introductions
Week 2 (September 23)
Lecture: Feminism and the History of Women’s History and Gender History
Seminar: The History of Women’s History and Gender History
Readings: Parr, Joy. "Gender History and Historical Practice." Canadian Historical Review.
76, no. 3 (1995); Pierson, Ruth Roach. "Experience, Difference, Dominance and Voice in the
Writing of Canadian Women's History." In Writing Women's History: International
Perspectives, edited by Karen M. Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, Jane Rendall and International
Federation for Research in Women's History, 79-106. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1991.
3
Week 3 (September 30)
Lecture: Native Women in early Canada
Seminar: The Role of Native Women in the Fur Trade
Readings: White, Bruce. "The Woman Who Married a Beaver: Trade Patterns and Gender
Roles in the Ojibwa Fur Trade." Ethnohistory, 46:1 (1999). Van Kirk, Sylvia. "From 'Marryingin' to 'Marrying-out': Changing Patterns of Aboriginal/Non-Aboriginal Marriage in Colonial
Canada." Frontiers 23, no. 2 (2000): 1-11.
Week 4 (October 7) *Historica Minute Analysis Due*
Lecture: Women in New France
Seminar: Les Femmes Favorisees?: Women in New France
Readings: Noel, Jan. Women in New France. Vol. 59. Ottawa: Canadian Historical
Association, 1998; Noel, Jan. "'Nagging Wife' Revisited: Women and the Fur Trade in New
France." French Colonial History 7 (2006): 45.
Week 5 (October 14)
Lecture: Women in the Maritimes
Seminar: Politics and Public Space: Women in the Maritimes
Readings: Huskins, Bonnie. "The Ceremonial Space of Women: Public Processions in
Victorian Saint John and Halifax." In Separate Spheres: Women's World in the NineteenthCentury Maritimes, edited by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, 145-60. Fredericton:
Acadiensis Press, 1994. Bitterman, Rusty. "Women and the Escheat Movement: The Politics
of Everyday Life on Prince Edward Island." In Separate Spheres: Women's World in the
Nineteenth-Century Maritimes, edited by Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, 23-38.
Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994.
Week 6 (October 21) *Biography Assignment Due*
Lecture: Women’s Work in Upper Canada
Seminar: Women’s Work in Upper Canada
Readings: Errington, E. Jane. Women and Their Work in Upper Canada. Vol. 64. Ottawa:
Canadian Historical Association, 2002. Yee, Shirley. "Gender Ideology and Black Women as
Community-Builders in Ontario, 1850-1870." Canadian Historical Review, 1994.
(October 28) – Reading Break, no classes
Week 7 (November 4)
Lecture: Sex and Crime
Seminar: Sex and Crime
Readings: Poutanen, Mary Anne. "The Homeless, the Whore, the Drunkard, and the
Disorderly: Contours of Female Vagrancy in the Montreal Courts." In Gendered Pasts:
Historical Essays in Femininity and Masculinity in Canada, edited by Kathryn McPherson,
Cecilia Morgan and Nancy Forestell, 29-47. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1999. Marks,
Lynn. "No Double Standard?: Lesiure, Sex, and Sin in Upper Canada Church Discipline
Records, 1800-1860." In Gendered Pasts, 48-64.
4
Week 8 (November 11)
Lecture: Medicine and Women’s Bodies
Seminar: Medicine and Women’s Bodies
Readings: Mitchinson, Wendy. "The Medical View of Women: The Case of Late Nineteenth
Century Canada." Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 3, no. 2 (1986): 207-24; Young,
Judith. "'Monthly' Nurses, 'Sick' Nurses, and Midwives in 19th Century Toronto, 1830-1891."
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 21, no. 2 (2004): 281-302.
Week 9 (November 18)
Lecture: Aboriginal women and Colonization efforts in the Nineteenth Century
Seminar: Aboriginal women and Colonization efforts in the Nineteenth Century
Readings: Carter, Sarah. "Categories and Terrains of Exclusion: Constructing the `Indian
Woman' in the Early Settlement Era in Western Canada." In In the Days of Our Grandmothers:
A Reader in Aboriginal Women's History in Canada, edited by Mary-Ellen Kelm and Lorna
Townsend. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Morgan, Cecilia. "Turning Strangers
into Sisters? Missionaries and Colonization in Upper Canada." In Sisters or Strangers?
Immigrant, Ethnic, and Racialized Women in Canadian History, edited by Marlene Epp, Franca
Iacovetta and Frances Swyrpa, 23-48. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Week 10 (November 25) *Primary Source Assignment Due*
Lecture: Industrialization and Reform
Seminar: Social Reform
Readings: Mitchinson, Wendy. "The WCTU: 'for God, Home and Native Land': A Study in
Nineteenth-Century Feminism." In A Not Unreasonable Claim: Women and Reform in
Canada, 1880s-1920s, edited by Linda Kealey, 151-67. Toronto: The Women's Press, 1979.
Mitchinson, Wendy. "The YWCA and Reform in the Nineteenth Century." Histoire
sociale/Social History 24 (1979): 368-84.
Week 11 (December 2)
Lecture: Immigration and Women (guest lecturer)
Seminar: Immigration and Women in the West
Readings: Lowewen, Royden. "'the Children, the Cows, My Dear Man, and My Sister': The
Transplanted Lives of Mennonite Farm Women, 1874-1900." Canadian Historical Review 73,
no. 3 (1992): 344-73. Perry, Adele. "Whose Sisters and What Eyes? White Women, Race, and
Immigration to British Columbia, 1849-1871." In Sisters or Strangers? Immigrant, Ethnic, and
Racialized Women in Canadian History, edited by Marlene Epp, Franca Iacovetta and Frances
Swyrpa, 49-70. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Week 12 (December 9)
Lecture: Women and the History of Education (guest lecturer)
Seminar: IN CLASS TEST
Readings: none
5
Course Policies:
Submitting Assignments and Late Penalties: Ass assignments should be handed in to me, in person, in
lecture or tutorial. Assignments for this course must be double spaced, in 12-point font, and with
standard margins. You may double side the pages to save paper. All assignments require a
bibliography and footnotes that follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Sample citations can be found
here: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Late assignments with be penalized 2% per weekday. If you are late handing in an assignment due to a
sudden illness or emergency, please contact me and be prepared to provide documentation to support
your reason for handing it in late (ie. a doctor’s note).
Email Protocol: I am happy to respond to questions over email, however, please make sure that the
answer to your question does not exist in the course syllabus or on the course website before you email
me. I try to reply to emails within 24-48 hours. If you have not heard back from me after 48 hours,
please do email me again. Please include “HIS3160” in the subject line of all emails, as well as a
reference to your query, ie. “question about a source for the second assignment.” Please write to me
from your trentu email address, and please be sure to include your full name in your email to me.
Occasionally I will accept assignments over email. Please send me an email to ask if this is okay, and
if it is, please make sure that your name is within the assignment (ie. on the top of every page or on the
title page) and that the assignment is properly attached to the email.
6