Course module - A Gendered History of the United States, 1776-Present
Code : AMER20151 Credit rating: 20 Semester : 1
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Aims |
Objectives |
Assessment |
Information
|
Course Content |
Course Materials |
Tutors |
Timetable |
Teaching Methods |
Keywords
Aims
- To increase students’ understanding of the importance of gender in understanding United States history; to add to their ability to work effectively with a variety of sources (both textual and otherwise);
- To assist them in improving their written and verbal expression skills; to increase their confidence and ability in locating, understanding, and presenting information.
Objectives (Learning Outcomes)
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Understand the historical construction of gender roles, and the mutual relationship between gender, race, sexuality, and class in the United States from independence to the present day;
- Analyse primary and secondary sources and of the relationship between these two categories; understand the relationship between individual events/historical moments/specific situations and broader historical patterns;
- Locate, analyse, and present information; respond verbally to assigned readings; engage in group discussions;
- Extend ability to work independently; locate appropriate materials; organize thoughts.
Assessment
One 2,500-word essay (40%); one 2-hour unseen written examination (60%); one 2,500-word non-assessed formative essay.
The use of dictionaries in the examination is prohibited. This rule applies to all categories of students, including all Visiting Students.
Information
THIS COURSE IS NOT AVAILABLE AS FREE CHOICE.
Course Content
This course will examine the role of gender in the history of the United States from the era of the American Revolution to the present day. It will explore the mutually constitutive roles of ideals of masculinity and femininity, and of heterosexuality and homosexuality. Emphasis will be placed on changing ideas about gender in relation to the creation and expansion of the United States, race, slavery, and abolition, the Civil War, urbanisation, the rise of industrial capitalism, the formation of mass popular cultures, the experience of the two world wars, and the development of feminism and the gay rights movement.
Course Materials
Tutor(s)
Zacek, Dr Natalie
Timetable
PROVISIONAL TIMETABLE FOR 2012-2013
Lecture: Monday, 3.00-5.00
Seminars: T B A
Teaching Methods
One 2-hour lecture and one 1-hour seminar per week.
Preliminary reading
Ava Baron, ed., Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor (Cornell, 1991)
Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995)
Patricia Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New York (Vintage, 1999)
Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (Oxford, 1992)
Martin Bauml Duberman, et al., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past(Penguin, 1991)
John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (Yale, 1979)
Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America(Yale, 1982)