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MASTER SYLLABUS

Master Syllabus

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Administrative Unit: History and Political Science Department
Course Prefix and Number: HIST 322
Course Title: *Women and Gender in European History
Number of:
Credit Hours 3
Lecture Hours 3
Lab Hours 0
Catalog Description:

This course examines the history of women across Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. This course examines gender as a system of power relations that has been integral to the shaping of European nations' politics and public policy and to the development of national and international economies. The class explores the meaning of women's status across cultures and historical periods; examines how women have attempted to define, maintain or gain power in changing historical circumstances; identify common dilemmas and struggles faced by women; and consider how changing definitions of gender have intersected with ideas about race and ethnicity throughout European history. Cross-listed as WMST 322. Prerequisite: Junior standing.
 
Prerequisite(s) / Corequisite(s):

Junior standing.
 
Course Rotation for Day Program:

Offered even Spring.
 
Text(s): Most current editions of the following:


Most current editions of the following:



A required text from texts 1-3 must be assigned and supplemented with a primary documents collection from texts 4-6. Additional primary and secondary sources may be assigned as well. Texts 7-23 are additional recommendations for supplementary monographs.




Becoming Visible: Women in European History
By Bridenthal, Renate, Susan Stuard, & Merry Wiesner, eds. (Cengage)
Required
Gendering European History
By Caine, Barbara & Glenda Sluga (Continuum Intl Pub Group)
Required
Gender & History in Western Europe
By Shoemaker, Robert & Mary Vincent, eds. (A Hodder Arnold Publication)
Required
Lives and Voices: Sources in European Women's History
By DiCaprio and Wiesnder (Cengage)
Required
European Women: A Documentary History:1789-1945
By Riemer and Fout (Schocken Books)
Required
Women, the Family and Freedom: The Debate in Documents, Vol. 1:1750-1880 and Vol. 2: 1880-1950
By Karen Offen and Bell, ed. (Stanford University Press)
Required
Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe
By Timm and Sandborn (Berg)
Recommended
Women in European Culture and Society: Gender, Skill and Identity from 1700
By Simonton, Deborah (Routledge)
Recommended
Women in Nineteenth-Century Europe
By Ruchs and Thompson (Palgrave MacMillan)
Recommended
Women in Twentieth-Century Europe
By Allen, Ann T. (Palgrave MacMillan)
Recommended
European Feminisms: A Political History, 1700-1950
By Offen, Karen (Stanford University Press)
Recommended
Changing Lives: Women in European History Since 1700
By Bonnie Smith (Cengage)
Recommended
Writing a Woman’s Life
By Heilbrun, Carolyn (Ballantine Books)
Recommended
A Companion to Feminist Philosophy
By Jagger, Alison & Iris Young, eds. (Blackwell Publishing, Incorporated)
Recommended
Mothers of a New World
By Koven, Seth & Sonya Michel (Routledge)
Recommended
The Creation of Patriarchy
By Lerner, Gerda (Oxford University Press)
Recommended
Be a Man! Males in Modern Society
By Stearns, Peter (Holmes & Meier Publishers)
Recommended
The Family Romance of the French Revolution
By Lynn Hunt (University of California Press)
Recommended
The Trials of Masculinity
By McLaren, Angus (University of Chicago Press)
Recommended
Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives
By Steedman, Carolyn (Rutgers University Press)
Recommended
A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England
By John Tosh (Yale University Press)
Recommended
Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Commune
By Gullickson, Gay L. (Cornell University Press)
Recommended
Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance
By Chaudhuri and Strobel (Indiana University Press)
Recommended
 
Course Objectives

• To understand the impact of gender on the development of European societies, families, politics, and economics. • To study gender as a system of power relations. • To inquire into women's differences based on race, class, and other factors. • To understand how issues of class, race and nation shaped men’s and women’s lives and how gender differentiates historical experiences. • To understand gender relations within the context of men’s and women’s lives as individuals, as members of groups, and within the larger context of European history.
 
Measurable Learning Outcomes:

• Describe major themes within European women's history. • Identify and characterize significant historical factors which contribute to patterns of change and continuity. • Analyze primary documents within a historical framework. • Define and explain the idea of social constructions of gender. • Describe the concept of "separate spheres" in its historical development, and its subsequent effects upon social structure. • Define and explain the politics of power as it relates to separate spheres and gender construction. • Define and explain the diversity of women's experiences in political and social movements and how the social construction of gender shapes and is shaped by these experiences.
 
Topical Outline:

Because the course represents an upper level history elective, it bears a distinctive responsibility for teaching advanced knowledge within the discipline. It must be distinguished as an advanced course by three structural components: extensive reading, intensive writing, and historiographical thinking. It must require advanced students to complete both in class and out of class projects (i.e. midterms, finals, team reports, quizzes, research papers). It must demand a minimum of 1,000 pages of required text reading, 1,000 words of type-written work, and a consideration of the range and variance of historical scholarship. Finally, it must develop student skills and abilities for researching diverse sources of knowledge and organizing findings through synthesis. • Gender and the politics of history • Social constructions of gender • Women and religion from the Middle Ages through the Reformation • Women's contributions to the Renaissance • Women and the advancement of science and learning •Industrialization and gendered work • Separation of spheres and the cult of domesticity • Women and reform movements • Feminism and Socialism • Gender and race •Gender and class •Women in the social welfare state

 
 
Culminating Experience Statement:

Material from this course may be tested on the Major Field Test (MFT) administered during the Culminating Experience course for the degree. 
During this course the ETS Proficiency Profile may be administered.  This 40-minute standardized test measures learning in general education courses.  The results of the tests are used by faculty to improve the general education curriculum at the College.
 

Recommended maximum class size for this course: 35
 
Library Resources:

Online databases are available at http://www.ccis.edu/offices/library/index.asp. You may access them from off-campus using your CougarTrack login and password when prompted.
 
Prepared by: Tonia Compton Date: October 13, 2010
NOTE: The intention of this master course syllabus is to provide an outline of the contents of this course, as specified by the faculty of Columbia College, regardless of who teaches the course, when it is taught, or where it is taught. Faculty members teaching this course for Columbia College are expected to facilitate learning pursuant to the course objectives and cover the subjects listed in the topical outline. However, instructors are also encouraged to cover additional topics of interest so long as those topics are relevant to the course's subject. The master syllabus is, therefore, prescriptive in nature but also allows for a diversity of individual approaches to course material.

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