"Remembering the Ladies": Literatures of Reform and Revolution in Early America

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

"...and by the way, in the new Code of Laws ... I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors." - Abigail Adams, Letter to her husband, John, March 31, 1776 In this course we will consider the ways in which women writers shaped social, political, and religious dialogue from the British colonial period to the 21st century in North America. Taking up Abigail Adams' charge to "Remember the Ladies," we will ask how American women writers took up the mantle for social change, adapting and inventing literary tools to fit their reforming interests. We will explore a variety of genres from personal poetry to political declarations, considering how women writers over the course of three centuries both unsettled and reenforced systems of social hierarchy and inequality, applying the questions these reformers asked to our own present-day experiences. Throughout our reading, writing, and class discussions, we will continually return to the guiding questions of the course: In what ways do women writers complicate, dismantle, or otherwise reinscribe systems of inequality in early America? And what can we, in our twenty-first-century context, learn from them?