Choose a topic from the following options and write an analytical essay.
Parameters: 4-6 pages, double spaced, regular margins, etc. Check
grammar, check spelling, proof read, look-up words you don’t know or only
think you know.
1. The new industrial era (1880-1920) forged new work and social patterns in women's lives. Using evidence from Peiss and Woloch, write a paper on women's sexuality, the commercial “sphere” and feminism in this historic context. Did the commercial venues through which women expressed a new sexual identity enlarge or constrict women’s status and power in the new industrial society? How and why?
2. Using evidence from the women’s clubs movements, the birth control movement, and the early ERA, discuss how black women’s organizing differed from white women’s in the early 20th century. What were black women’s goals and methods? How did black women understand their gender? Why couldn’t white women’s organizations accommodate the needs of black women?
Additional web resources: http://womhist.binghamton.edu/projectmap.htm
(see projects: “African-American Women in the Woman's Christian Temperance
Union, 1880-1990” and “The Early Years of the National Association of Colored
Women, 1895-1920”)
3. Women engaged in activities during the Progressive Era that frequently sought to improve women’s “industrial condition.” Inherent in this, however, was a strong class agenda, and one which many working class women rebelled against. How did progressive reformers’ activities create cross-class alliances and how limited were they? You can use evidence from Peiss on commercial amusements, the shirtwaist workers and their alliance with the WTUL, Jane Adams and Hull House, and/or the birth control movement. (Your paper does not need to include all of these, nor should it be limited to these – I would not, however, reach back to Stansell’s article on NYC women in the nineteenth century.)
Additional web resources: http://womhist.binghamton.edu/projectmap.htm
See projects: “How Was the Relationship between Workers and Allies
Shaped by the Perceived Threat of Socialism in the New York City Shirtwaist
Strike, 1909-1910?” and “How Did Animosity Between Margaret Sanger and
Mary Ware Dennett Shape the Movement to Legalize Birth Control?”