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Undergraduate spring application deadline is December 1 for spring term.

HIST 309 Women and Public Activism

This course examines women's public activism in the United States from the Republican period to the social movements of the 1960s. Thematic emphasis is on an analysis of how women's position outside traditional politics determined the direction of their activism over time, with particular attention to the development of collective efforts to achieve legal, political, economic and social equality with men. Students consider how ethnicity, race and class differences among women affected these coalitions for social change. In addition, students learn to understand how the civil rights and women's movements created opportunities for women to change mainstream politics by the 1970s.

Prerequisites

4 Undergraduate credits

Effective January 24, 2000 to present

Meets graduation requirements for

Learning outcomes

General

  • Can explain how women's status as political outsiders determined the direction of their public activism until 1920, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
  • Can explain the preconditions for the civil rights and women's movements in the 1960s and 1970s and the strategies and goals of organized feminism, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
  • Can explain why and how suffrage agitation became a mass-based movement from 1890 to 1920, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university. Can explain why women remained political outsiders in the post-suffrage era, consistent with the analytical and expressive complexity and sophistication that are distinctively characteristic of upper-division courses completed at a comprehensive university.
  • Can explain why women remained political outsiders in the post-suffrage era, 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 9: Ethical and Civic Responsibility

  • Examine, articulate, and apply their own ethical views.
  • Understand and apply core concepts (e.g. politics, rights and obligations, justice, liberty) to specific issues.
  • Analyze and reflect on the ethical dimensions of legal, social, and scientific issues.
  • Recognize the diversity of political motivations and interests of others.
  • Identify ways to exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

Spring 2025

Section Title Instructor books eservices
50 Women and Public Activism Staff, Staff Books for HIST-309-50 Spring 2025 Course details for HIST-309-50 Spring 2025