HIST 329 Legacies: History of Women and the Family
This course analyzes the family as both a public and a private institution adjusting to and shaping social, political and economic changes in American life from the colonial period to the present. Even though contemporary debates about family values suggest a fixed pattern of family life, students learn how family patterns have changed over time in response to historical changes such as wars, slavery, the disappearing frontier, industrialization, immigration and migration, consumer culture, social movements and social protest, and the rise of the welfare state. Primary emphasis is on an examination of how women used their positions within the family to gain personal power and access to public institutions.
Prerequisites
4 Undergraduate credits
Effective August 1, 1998 to present
Meets graduation requirements for
Learning outcomes
General
- Understands how events such as wars, slavery and abolition, industrialization, urbanization, immigration, consumer culture, and grassroots social movements have shaped and changed family life in U.S. history, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- Understands how women have used their positions in the family to gain power and authority throughout U.S. history, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- Understands the different forms that family life has taken historically in U.S. history and understands that there has been no one "normal" or "natural" form of family life, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- Understands the way in which the family and the changing U.S. state have shaped one another historically, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
- Understands the ways in which the family unit has functioned as both a public and a private institution in U.S. history, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
Minnesota Transfer Curriculum
Goal 5: History and the Social and Behavioral Sciences
- Employ the methods and data that historians and social and behavioral scientists use to investigate the human condition.
- Examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods and cultures.
- Use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
- Develop and communicate alternative explanations or solutions for contemporary social issues.
Goal 7: Human Diversity
- Understand the development of and the changing meanings of group identities in the United States' history and culture.
- Demonstrate an awareness of the individual and institutional dynamics of unequal power relations between groups in contemporary society.
- Analyze their own attitudes, behaviors, concepts and beliefs regarding diversity, racism, and bigotry.
- Describe and discuss the experience and contributions (political, social, economic, etc.) of the many groups that shape American society and culture, in particular those groups that have suffered discrimination and exclusion.
- Demonstrate communication skills necessary for living and working effectively in a society with great population diversity.