Dr. Joanne E. Gates
JSU English
Prepared for CORE Academy 2015
If you did your homework, (or studied
our document), you at least saw these:
DOCUMENT: Web Resources for Teaching Women’s
History Month.
[None of these are required viewing as a prerequisite for
attending, and it is unlikely they will be played during
the session. Consider them background or the
supplements to our annotated bibliographies.]
History of Women's History Month by National
Women's History Museum
https://youtu.be/VgGOBbjeNZU
Also contains Women’s History Minutes.
Document, continued (2)
 Why Women's History Matters: Leigh Ann Wheeler at
TEDxBinghamtonUniversity:
A skeptical yet positive approach to whether Women's
History Month has made a difference, 15 minutes
 https://youtu.be/MFpG9hN8d5s
As teachers, we are allowed to be self critical, to question
why History of Women is relegated to March and
whether we include enough Black Women in February.
Document, continued (3)
 Wider view of Women in History:
 Great Women: Athletes inducted into National
Women's Hall of Fame
 Kathrine Switzer: http://kathrineswitzer.com/
 Watch her brief video, telling the real story of her as
first woman to run the Boston Marathon, 1967
 Great Women of Science: Lynn Sherr talks about her
book, Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space.
 http://www.c-span.org/video/?324264-2/bookdiscussion-sally-ride
Document, continued (4)
 Importance of Black American Women:
 Alice McGill re-enacts an appearance by Sojourner
Truth: http://www.c-span.org/video/?1639401/sojourner-truth-womens-history
 Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative in Context
 http://www.c-span.org/video/?186972-1/bookdiscussion-harriet-jacobs-life
 Historian and Jacobs biographer Jean Fagan Yellin
teaches high school students who have read the
Narrative.
Homework (5)
 Teachers incorporating Women's History should know
that Suffragette (with Meryl Streep as Emmeline
Pankhurst) premieres in the fall. A very brief trailer
has been released.
 The HBO Film, Iron Jawed Angels (2004) features the
effort to pass the 19th Amendment. American
Suffragists Alice Paul (Hilary Swank), Lucy Burns, Inez
Millholland (Julia Ormond), Carrie Chapman Catt
(Angelica Houston) are featured. Clips available on
YouTube.
National Women's History
Project, nwhp.org
 http://www.nwhp.org/35th-anniversary-celebration/
 This is the most recent celebration.
 Use the site to look at Past History Month events,
going back to the First Presidential Declaration of
1980.
 In 1987, Congress declared March as National
Women’s History Month in perpetuity.
National Women's History Project
 http://www.nwhp.org/
 Rich resource for Writing Women Back Into History.
 Calendars organize important women’s birthdays. This
Month in Women’s History, and the History of the
designation of the month of March are featured. Also
provides a list of Women’s Performers or Re-enactors,
featuring Susan Marie Frontczak, who re-enacts
Eleanor Roosevelt, Mary Shelley, and others
http://www.storysmith.org/.
National Women's History
Project includes rich resources.
Any teacher can find packaged
“Lesson Plans” and even quiz-like flash
cards on ways to integrate Women’s
Experiences.
Other sites for Women’s History
 Women's History Month Web Resources
 NEA has this (embedded in our Program description)
http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/50888.htm
A particularly rich site, with lesson plans, links, links
to quizzes and other sites that include focus on this
and related topics. By Phil Nast, retired middle school
teacher and freelance writer.

Another Important Unit for
Teaching: Women in poetry at
poets.org
 http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/lesson/women-poetry
Six week unit created by New York City public school
teacher Carolyn Kohli, introduces students to a broad
range of women’s voices in poetry. Students develop a
poetic and technological vocabulary simultaneously
through a series of creative and critical writing exercises
and Internet research and citation.
Carolyn Kohli’s Women in Poetry (2)
 “Women in Poetry” primarily explores contemporary
poetry with themes as diverse as “Entering the
Darkness Out of Childhood," “Voices of the Mothers,"
“The Body Electric," and “Ars Poetica.” Each thematic
set of lessons requires students to practice basic skills
in Microsoft Word and on the Internet, responding to
each poem grouping with information obtained in web
research and their own creative and critical
responses.
Unit Length: 33 Class Periods
Southern Women Trailblazers
 http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/7674
 From LearnNC.org
 Includes Timeline and information specific to the
state.
 Note that the premiere North Carolina On line
Repository is also important, Documenting the
American South
http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/collections.html
And exploration of sites from
which one develops one’s
own knowledge base and
ideas for class units.
Repositories and Devoted
Websites
 The Importance of Public Domain Texts on Line.
 Archive.org, Project Gutenberg, Hathi Trust, Google
books.
 For women:
 A Celebration of Women Writers
 Edited by Mary Mark Ockerbloom
 http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/
Archives of Women of
Importance
 (These are included so that students get a look at the
way
 Major repository is organized. Some will include
online access to documents and visuals. Some organize
the contents of a physical collection.)
 Note that date of update for some of this is not
current. However, there are numerous working links
that are rich.
Diary of Midwife
Martha Ballard
 For instance, this listing for multiple sites:
 http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/links/resource.htm
 includes teacher resources and teaching links, including
one to Martha Ballard's diary on line at do History.
 http://dohistory.org/home.html Now replaces PBS site
for the best place on additional information on the
landmark and Pulitzer Prize-winning A Midwife’s Tale by
Laruel Thatcher Ulrich
Diary of Midwife Martha Ballard
 DVD of the program should be on permanent
reserve at JSU Library.
WWW Virtual Library Women's
History (another composite site):
 http://www.iisg.nl/w3vlwomenshistory/unitedstates.html
 Zora Neale Hurston Archive at University of Central Florida
 http://chdr.cah.ucf.edu/hurstonarchive/
 Also Note: Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of
Congress
 http://www.loc.gov/collection/zora-neale-hurstonplays/about-this-collection/
Authors and their websites
 Beatrix Potter at http://www.peterrabbit.com/uk
 All things Jane Austen, originally the Jane Austen Info
Page: http://pemberley.com/

 Gertrude Bell Archive at Newcastle University
 http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/
 This is rich for its ability to look up photos, letters, diary
entries.
Women Writers Whose Residences are
Prominent Features in Their Legacies
 Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House at
http://louisamayalcott.org/
 Edith Wharton at The Mount, outside Lennox,
Massachusetts: http://www.edithwharton.org/
 There is also the International Edith Wharton Society,
with a Journal and Conference activities
 https://edithwhartonsociety.wordpress.com/
 Emily Dickinson Museum:
https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/
Orchard House
Edith Wharton at The Mount
EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org
Elizabeth Robins, 1862-1952
 Holdings of the NYU Collection, Guide to the
Elizabeth Robins Papers
 http://dlib.nyu.edu/findingaids/html/fales/robins/

 Robins Web at JSU
 http://www.jsu.edu/robinsweb/
And where is it located?
Greatwomen.org
From: Greatwomen.org
[The National Women’s Hall of
Fame]: Members of the Hall, A to Z
Abigail Adams
Members of the Hall, A to Z
 Olympian and pro-golfer
 Mildred "Babe"
Didrikson
Zaharias
 Searches and Displays
can also can be
organized by year of
Induction.
Lilly Ledbetter
 Jacksonville Native
Lilly Ledbetter
inducted 2011.
Wider view of
Women in History:
 Great Women: Athletes
inducted into National
Women's Hall of Fame
 Kathrine Switzer
 http://kathrineswitzer.com/
 Watch her brief video,
telling the real story of
her as first woman to run
the Boston Marathon,
1967. (I discovered her as
part of my study of the
2011 Induction Class.)
From Greatwomen.org:
• In 1969, the women and men of Seneca Falls created
the National Women’s Hall of Fame, believing that the
contributions of American women deserved a
permanent home in the small village where the fight
for women’s rights began. The Hall is currently housed
in the Helen Mosher Barben Building, in the heart of
the downtown Historic District.
• The National Women’s Hall of Fame is the nation’s
oldest membership organization dedicated to
recognizing and celebrating the achievements of great
American women.
Every upstate NY school child
knows:
• In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton (a Seneca Falls
resident), Lucretia Mott and 300 other women and
men held the first Women’s Rights Convention. The
Declaration of Sentiments, modeled after the
Declaration of Independence, was presented and
passed by the convention. These resolutions included,
among other demands, that women have the right to
vote. The struggle for women’s rights had begun.
Declaration of Sentiments
 Like the Cherokee Nation, who had earlier
petitioned the Federal Government, the
Declaration of Sentiments echoes the Declaration
of Independence.
 “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all
men and women are created equal…”
The Women’s Rights
National Historic Park
 Is also located in Seneca Falls, and includes the
Wesleyan Chapel, where the Women’s Suffrage
Convention was held in 1848.
Nominated and Judged by National
Panel
 First class of twenty inducted 1973
 Current enrollment is over 250, with ten to twelve
women added every other year.
 Next Induction is fall 2015.
 Capital Campaign will include moving to new
headquarters in the Historic Knitting Mill
National Parks Service has guides to teaching using their
state parks:
http://www.nps.gov/wori/index.htm
Wesleyan Chapel, built 1843
Seneca Falls: Women’s Rights National Historic Park
Stanton’s House
In the front yard stands a Horse Chestnut
tree that is old enough to have been there
when the Stantons lived in Seneca Falls.
In May 1851 Amelia Bloomer introduced Susan B.
Anthony to Elizabeth Cady Stanton as depicted in
the life-sized bronze figures sculpted by Ted Aub. In
"When Anthony Met Stanton" as in real-life,
Bloomer and Stanton are wearing the "Bloomer
Costume" which bloomer publicized in "The Lily."
At the Women’s Rights
Historical Park
Acquired by the NWHF and
now being renovated
through a Capital Campaign
Ideas for use of the site
 Assign groups a letter of
 The sifting or findings
the alphabet.
 Each group selects from
ten or a dozen the two or
three who are most
prominent OR who are
most interesting to their
own future careers.
can be presented using
display images taken
from the site.
 Or the Treasure hunt of
additional resources
might be undertaken.
Card Game of Authors
 Works like “Fish”: Ask a specific person for a specific
card; she must forfeit to asker or if the person does not
have the card, draw from the pile.
 Each of 13 Women has Four Accomplishments
 (corresponding to clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades).
 The complete set makes up a “book” of that woman
and can be laid out for points awarded.
(Consider assigning a personalized pack of cards.)
Equal Pay in Recent Headlines
The Hollywood Reporter
 Covered Patricia Arquette’s speech at the UN. (Of
course she had made headlines just previously with
her speech at the Oscars.)
 http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/patriciaarquette-hillary-clinton-stress-780629
 Patricia Arquette Stresses Wage Equality Urgency
at UN Women's Rally: "This Is 2015, Not 1915!"
 by Ashley Lee: 3/10/2015.
 More at: UN women: http://www.unwomen.org/en
Electronic Resources allow access to
Revolution and Not for Ourselves
Alone, the two-part Ken Burns
documentary on suffrage featuring
Anthony and Stanton.
Along with almost 80 titles in
 Films on Demand under search string “Women’s
History.”
 Libraries at other universities sometimes aggregate
Resources. Primary Sources List at University of
Washington:
 http://guides.lib.washington.edu/content.php?pid=75
276&sid=557468
 http://guides.lib.washington.edu/history-women
Not to be overwhelmed by
too much information:
 As instructors, we should find ways to make any
unit on Women’s History or Literature by Women
a learning experience that is interactive.
 In my Women’s Lit Class, groups make their own
Jeopardy style sets of questions for Review at
Midterm.
 I have a game board of questions written, and $$
from “KidsMoneyFarm” to award.
While these and other activities
 Make fun engagements for the full class,
 Students do real work when they research how a writer
or her work has or has not been part of the canon, or
the books most frequently taught and considered
important to their period and nationality.
Is there a “critical edition” of the work?
Is there a body of research on teaching the work, or a
volume in the Approaches to Teaching … series?