V57.0635: Gender and Women in the US since 1865.
SPRING 2008
Tuesday/Thursday 11-12:15
Silver 520
Professor Linda Gordon
Linda.Gordon@nyu.edu
KJCC, 53 Washington Square South, room 606
998-8627
Office hours: Tuesdays 10-10:45, Thursdays 9:30-10:45, and by appointment
Teaching Assistants:
Lina Britto, lmb314@nyu.edu, office hours to be announced
Ivy Klenetsky, imk213@nyu.edu, office hours to be announced
George Tomlinson, gst202@nyu.edu, office hours to be announced
ESSENTIAL BOOKS WILL INCLUDE (those you probably want to buy):
DuBois and Dumenil, Through Women’s Eyes
Bederman, Manliness and Civilization
Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom
Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire
Baxandall and Gordon, eds., Dear Sisters
Van Gosse, The Movements of the New Left
Recommended (we read only parts of these but they are available for purchase):
Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics
Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars
Students must be able to find articles on the web and on-line through data-bases. Students must also
have developed a clear understanding of what constitutes plagiarism and avoid it.
Used copies of some of these books may be available at various bookstores, but get the editions
specified.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
–2 short papers, on topics assigned, 1000-2000 words in length
--take-home final exam
--several very short response papers (approximately 1 page)
--regular attendance at lecture
--regular attendance at and active participation in discussion sections
GRADING will be determined approximately as follows: discussion preparedness and participation,
20%; short response papers, 15%; paper #1, 20%; paper #2, 20%; final, 25%.
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LECTURE AND READING SCHEDULE
Jan. 22: INTRODUCTION
Reading: THE SYLLABUS.
--Make sure you understand it and know what is required and expected.
--Note that the amount of reading is not equally distributed; mark the weeks of heavy reading, the
paper due dates, the exam dates, so that you're prepared.
--Make sure you know how to find articles on line on data-bases such as JSTOR and Proquest
Research.
–Consider the syllabus as itself a text and ask yourself, does it have implicit arguments? Biases?
Jan. 24-29. GENDER, FEMININITY, MASCULINITY
Barbara Welter, "Cult of True Womanhood,” Jstor.
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” Signs 1 #1, fall 1975, Jstor.
Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, chapters 1, 2, 5, 6.
Denise Brennan, "Women Work, Men Sponge, and Everyone Gossips: Macho Men and
Stigmatized/ing Women in a Sex Tourist Town," Anthropological Quarterly fall 2004, vol. 77
#4, Proquest.
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo and Michael Messner, “Gender Displays and Men’s Power: the `New
Man’ and the Mexican Immigrant Man,” on Blackboard.
Two articles on American Indians:
Dolores Janiewski, “Learning to Live `Just Like White Folks’,” on Blackboard.
Joan Jensen, “Native American Women and Agriculture,” Sex Roles vol. 3 #5, Oct. 1977, on
Blackboard.
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THEMES, QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
--structure, agency
--hegemony, domination
--gender gap
--lesbian, homosexual, heterosexual
--who creates and maintains gender and how do they do it?
--are Welter’s and Smith-Rosenberg’s arguments compatible?
--how much do gender systems vary?
--are gender systems durable, changeable, inevitable? top-down or bottom-up?
--what aspects of the "cult of true womanhood" are still visible?
--a "cult of true manhood"?
--what does it mean to speak of gender as performance?
--is it possible that the whole concept of gender masks more than it reveals?
Jan. 31-Feb. 12. WOMEN IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: FEMINIST AND OTHER
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 4, pp. 213-235, documents pp. 245-63; Seneca Falls
Declaration; Supreme Court decisions A-24-26.
Susan Levine, “Labor’s True Woman:” Domesticity and Equal Rights in the Knights of Labor,” Journal
of American History 70 #2, Sept. 1983, Jstor.
Barbara Welke, "When All the Women Were White, and All the Blacks were Men: Gender, Class,
Race, and the Road to Plessy, 1855-1914," Law and History Review fall 1995, Jstor.
Gordon, Moral Property of Women, chapters 4-5, reserve.
DuBois and Gordon, "Seeking Ecstasy on the Battlefield," Feminist Studies 9 #1, spring 1983,
Jstor.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, “Solitude of Self,” 1892, at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5315
Susan B. Anthony, “Social Purity,” 1872, at
http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/resources/index.html?body=solitude_self.html
Leonora Barry on work in the Knights of Labor at http://www.uwm.edu/Course/448-440/woman.htm
and at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5011
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THEMES, QUESTIONS:
--feminism, women’s rights, women’s movement
--sisterhood
--what were the limitations of the 19th-century feminist vision?
--did the 19th-century women’s-rights approach challenge gender in any way?
--would they have done better not to focus on suffrage?
--would other emphases have created a more inclusive movement?
--why did birth control seem so unacceptable to so many?
--why do feminists hate sex, if they do?
Feb. 26. Paper #1 due. 1000-1500 words on one of several topics which will be assigned.
Feb. 14-26. CLASS, RACE, IMMIGRATION
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 5, pp. 283-91, 311-16; chapter 6, 340-99.
Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom, chapters 2-6, 8, chapters 1 and 7 highly recommended.
Fraser and Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency,” in Signs winter 1994, vol. 19 #2, Jstor.
Wendy Wall, “Gender and the `Citizen Indian’,” from Writing the Range, on reserve.
Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, chapters 4-7, 9-13, reserve if you don’t
want to buy it..
Recommended: Gordon, Moral Property, chapter 6
THEMES, QUESTIONS:
--modernity/tradition
--independence/dependence
--what’s the difference between "race" and "ethnicity"?
--how might gender have been different had there been no massive "second immigration"?
--exactly how do the categories "race" and "gender" interact?
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Feb. 28-March 13. "PROGRESSIVISM" AND THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION," 1890-1930
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 7, all; chapter 8, pp. 480-97, documents 519-525; Supreme Court
decisions A-26-28.
Jane Addams on the settlements, 1897, at
http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/urbanexp/main.cgi?file=new/show_doc.ptt&doc=1027&chap=13
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Jane Addams, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” 1893, at
http://tigger.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/urbanexp/main.cgi?file=new/show_doc.ptt&doc=853&chap=45
Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire, introduction, chapters 1, 2, 4, epilogue (other chapters
highly recommended).
Gordon, The Moral Property of Women, chapter 8 (9 recommended as well)
Kathy Peiss, “American Women and the Making of Modern Consumer Culture,” read this at
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol1no1/peiss-text.html
Recommended: Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, chapters 3-5.
THEMES, QUESTIONS:
--what were the major disagreements among Progressive activists?
--what underlay these differences?
--what were the costs of the "sexual revolution"?
--how did consumerism change the gender system, or did it?
--is there any common denominator among the various Progressive movements?
--what did Progressive movements accomplish and what did they fail at?
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March 25-April 1. WELFARE, WAR, McCARTHYISM, 1930-1960
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 8, 497-518, documents 534-47; chapter 9, pp. 554-67, documents
593-608.
Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, chapters 7-10 (6 recommended).
Fraser and Gordon, “A Genealogy of Dependency ” (again) in Signs winter 1994, vol. 19 #2,
Jstor.
Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, chapter 1, at http://www.hnet.org/~hst203/documents/friedan1.html
“I Denied My Sex,” on Blackboard.
THEMES, QUESTIONS:
--welfare
--cold war, "containment"
--feminine mystique--was this a Victorian gender system?
--what was the gender impact of the War?
April 8. paper #2 due
April 8-17. "THE MOVEMENT," 1950-80:
CIVIL RIGHTS, NEW LEFT, WOMEN'S LIBERATION, GAY LIBERATION
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 9, pp. 567-86 and 658-64, documents 613-21; chapter 10, 628-48,
documents 665-84; A-29-34.
Van Gosse, Movements of the New Left
Introduction
Documents ## 18, 20, 22, 26, 27, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 43.
Dear Sisters: Dispatches from Women’s Liberation.
Introduction
Chapter 2, intro, pp. 45-52, 59-66
Chapter 3, intro, pp. 67-72, 76-79
Chapter 4, intro, pp. 88-91, 93-101, 107-110
Chapter 8, intro, pp. 175-179, 187-189, 192-197
Chapter 11, intro, pp. 258-260, 266-267, 270-273
Look through as much of the art and poetry as you can.
Gordon, Moral Property of Women, chapter 13.
Documents on gay liberation at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/1969docs.html
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April 22-29. THE NEW CONSERVATISM AND GLOBAL NEO-LIBERALISM, 1980-?
Through Women’s Eyes, chapter 10, pp. 649-657, documents 685-92.
Gordon, Moral Property of Women, chapter 14, reserve
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, “Migrant Filipina Domestic Workers and the International Division of
Reproductive Labor,” Blackboard.
Altha Cravey, “The Politics of Reproduction: Households in the Mexican Industrial Transition,”
Blackboard.
Saskia Sassen, "Women’s Burden Counter-geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of
Survival," Journal of International Affairs spring 2000, vol. 53 #2, on line at Proquest.
or
Saskia Sassen, “Toward A Feminist Analytics of the Global Economy,” at Lexis.
Ronald Weitzer, “The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a
Moral Crusade,” Politics and Society 35, 2007, 447-68.
“Your Connection to Mexico’s Low-Cost Labor Force,”
http://www.madeinmexicoinc.com/maquiladoras_industry.htm
Valentine Moghadam, "Gender and Globalization: Female Labor and Women’s Mobilization,"
http://jwsr.ucr.edu/archive/vol5/number2/html/moghadam/index.html
Debbie Nathan, "Oversexed" at http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/082305WA.shtml
Christine Smallwood, "Female Chauvinist Pigs" at
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2005/10/05/levy/
THEMES, QUESTIONS:
--neoliberalism, globalization
--capital flight
--structural adjustment
--free trade zones
--is it crazy for women to be antifeminist?
May 1. Review
May 6. Final take-home exam due.
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