Reference no: EM13740750

HISTORY OF AMERICAN WOMEN, 1880 - PRESENT

Part 1-

(1) What qualities of middle-class womanhood, described in lecture & reading, do you see in Lizzie Borden?

(2) Why was Borden, according to the author, acquitted?

(3) Women were transforming the "public sphere" in a variety of ways at the end of the 19th century: What were different examples of how middle-class women empowered themselves to step beyond the boundaries of home & family?

Part 2-

(1) What were both the challenges and accomplishments of women with different backgrounds and different agendas in the years after the Civil War?

(2) How did this era "set the stage" for race relations in the 20th century?

Part 3-

(1) What were women's activities from a variety of backgrounds and locations under these conditions?

Part 4-

(1) In what activities during the Progressive Era (1890-1920) did women meet with success? Why?

(2) What theories about women (women's role, maternalism, feminism) and about race were embraced by activists and unions? How did some of those theories hinder women's quest for equality? (don't forget visual sources in your evidence)

Part 5-

(1) What were the positive aspects to the bursts of energies in the 1920s? How did women create, or participate in, these changes?

(2) What were examples of conflicting ideologies during the 1920s, and how women created, or participated in, them?

Part 6-

(1) The Great Depression affected men and women differently. How so? How did women help families and communities to cope and survive during this period?

Part 7-

(1) What are examples of ways, for women, that "the personal was political?" In other words, what important every-day encounters or realities of women from a variety of backgrounds prompted them to become activists? Another way of thinking about it: how did their personal experiences guide their political action?

(2) What were their specific demands?

Part 8-

(1) From these readings, what are some examples of culture, economics, and technology that affect women's experiences at the end of the 20th century and today?

(2) What are the connections between trends about women's bodies-and about women's ideal female role?