UNGRADED WRITING ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS
According to Peggy Pascoe (K&D, p. 286), "native helpers" in home mission societies help us "to understand the interaction between the ideology of female moral authority and nineteenth-century ideas about race and culture." What was the ideology of female moral authority? How did it reflect the circumstances and values of the women who devised it? Did it reinforce or undermine nineteenth-century racialism? Explain your answer. (Due, Jan. 21).
Describe the court decisions in Muller v. Oregon and MacKenzie v. Hare. What assumptions about women’s nature, roles, and status do they advance as justifications for differential legal treatment of women? What do they tell you about women’s status in the 1910s? (Due, Feb. 2).
Leavitt. How did class differences affect women’s experiences in childbirth in this period? Describe the controversies surrounding the use of scopolamine ("twilight sleep") in the early twentieth century. Explain the positions taken by doctors and middle class activist women on the issue. (Due, Feb. 9).
According to Beth Bailey, the transition from calling to dating "not only transformed the outward modes and conventions of American courtship, it also changed the distribution of control and power in courtship." (p. 20). Describe these changes in the conventions and power relations of courtship. Do you find her argument persuasive? Explain your answer. (Due, Feb. 18).
STUDY QUESTIONS
Timothy Meagher concludes that the roles of Irish American single women differed from those of Irish American married women. How were they different? How does he explain these differences?
According to George Sanchez, native-born Americans who supported the Americanization of immigrants targeted women in the Mexican American community for their programs. Why did they do this? How did they perceive Mexican American culture and its gender relations? What roles and values did they hope to encourage in Mexican American women? How did Mexican American women respond to Americanization programs? Why?
Rima Apple. What was scientific motherhood? Why did it emerge when it did? What were the roles of public policies (from local to federal), the medical profession, corporations, and mothers themselves in developing the ideology and practice of scientific motherhood?
Kathy Peiss. Describe the effects of the family economy, economic roles and circumstances, and ideologies of feminine respectability on working class women’s use of urban amusements in the first decades of the twentieth century.
Joan Brumberg (K&D): Brumberg argues that the social status and personal success of 20th century American women has been increasingly linked to body image and weight control. How did ideals of beauty change throughout the 20th century? How did patterns of consumption affect women's bodily perceptions? How does Brumberg account for the rise in anorexia nervosa among adolescent women in the United States? Brumberg identifies the late 20th century as a "transitional moment" for American women. How does she characterize this transitional moment and its paradoxes?
David Katzman: Describe the workday of a turn-of-the-century domestic servant in the United States? According to Katzman, how did the women themselves view their work? What groups of women were most likely to find employment in domestic service? Why?
According to Blanche Wiesen Cook, "the personal is political." Describe the connections between the political activism and personal relationships of Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Emma Goldman, and Crystal Eastman. What does Cook mean by "the historical denial of lesbianism"?
Suzanne Lebsock. How important were white supremacist arguments to advocates of woman suffrage in Virginia in the 1910s? To opponents of suffrage? What do the politics of race in Virginia suffrage debates reveal about connections between race and gender in American society? How did they affect African American and white women?
How and why did the politics of maternalism change in the 1920s? Explain in terms of changes and continuities in the political and economic context, shifts in gender relations, and the activities and goals of women’s organizations.
Lynne Curry. How did the middle class rural woman express "the discrepancy between her own rising expectations and the farm resources she actually controlled" (p. 502)? How did farm women and others, including home extension agents, express their concern about the effects of farm women’s heavy work loads? How was this related to concerns regarding family health and well-being? Why did the "modern" movement for health reform primarily engage and benefit well-to-do farm families?
Ruth Schwarz Cowan. How did the introduction of new household technologies affect the structure of household labor in the 1910s and 1920s? What meanings were attached to middle class women’s household labor by manufacturers, advertisers, the women themselves, and their families? How did this affect the labor and status of middle class women?
Blumberg (reserve). According to Blumberg, in the 19th century, "virginity was both a biological and a moral state." What does she mean by this? What role did doctors have in "diagnosing chastity"? How did sexual values and behaviors change in the 1920s?
Describe the commonalities and differences among sentimental maternalists, progressive maternalists, and feminists in the period from 1890-1930. How did each group understand womanhood, women’s family roles, and women’s relationship to the state? What kinds of organizations did they form? What were the main activities and goals of these organizations? What public policies did they support? Why? What did they do to try to increase women’s power?
Identify and state the significance of the following: "native helpers;" National American Woman Suffrage Association; "women adrift;" National Twilight Sleep Association; Infant Care; Charlotte Perkins Gilman; race suicide; voluntary motherhood; Comstock Act; Margaret Sanger; maternalism; protective legislation; mothers’ pensions; Jane Addams; New Woman; flapper; National Woman’s Party; Americanization; scientific motherhood; Children’s Bureau; Ida B. Wells; Dawes Act; Triangle Shirtwaist Factory; Equal Rights Amendment; Sheppard-Towner Act.