Spring 2004

WGS 345 • English & American Women Since 1800

Course Description

This course compares the experiences of women in England and the United States in the period from the nineteenth century to the present. English and American women in this period shared a common language, a literature, a commitment to representative institutions, and a belief in the rule of law. They shared as well the experiences of coping with domestic ideology and the struggle to open opportunities for women in work, politics, education, and the professions. In the twentieth century they shared the victories of the suffrage movement and the experiences of two world wars. The similarities in their shared experiences are striking, but there were defining differences as well. English women's history was shaped by a class system more rigid than that of the USA, while the American's women's movement was shaped by the frontier and a racial strife unknown in England except in the colonies. Among the topics to be considered: women's work=productive and reproductive, the impact of industrialization, patriarchy and femiknism, women's helath issues, the siuffrage movement, the impact of two world wars, the Women's Liberation Movement, and the Peace Movement.

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