Mar 29, 2024  
Catalogue 2018-2019 
    
Catalogue 2018-2019 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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HIST 154 - Victorian Women

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as WMST 154 ) This course introduces students to college writing and historical methodologies through the study of women in Victorian Britain.  We explore how women from various class and social backgrounds responded to debates about “woman’s nature” and the female body in their writings and reform campaigns.  Topics include slavery and abolition, industrial labor, women’s suffrage, higher education, domestic violence, sexual assault, and medical treatment for such conditions as hysteria.  Students practice writing skills through the close analysis of select texts on the craft of writing along with primary source materials, including memoirs, essays, government documents, and medical records, as well as material culture artifacts: photographs and paintings, crinolines and corsets.  We also examine the politics of the historical archive, exploring possible methods for researching Victorian women—especially working-class women, women of color, young women, and “lesbian like” or queer women—who were less likely to record their experiences and have them preserved, or who self-identified in terms that no longer fit our own.  In addition to short assignments, students complete an independent research paper on a topic of choice. Lydia Murdoch. 

Two 75-minute periods.



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