History of American Feminism

This first-year seminar will introduce students to the history of women and gender in the 18th, 19th, and 20th c. United States. Beginning with the question, what is feminism?, we will encounter original sources and scholarship about who women were, what they were up against, and what they wanted. We will thus take “women” as a contingent category that changed over time often in relation to categories such as: race, reproduction, violence, protest, work, and queerness. This course will introduce students to gender history and feminist theory, as well as to the skills and habits of historians across fields.