Karen J. Taylor
Department of History
This course falls under the rubrick of the History Department's "Introduction to Historical Investigation" series, which is designed to introduce students to the theories and methods of the historian's craft. This course is basically an investigation of the way gender has affected American men's lives. Like women, men's experiences, feelings, and actions, have been shaped by their gender roles, and usually not very beneficially. The complex dynamic between men's roles and their lives demonstrates that men have suffered from sexism in ways very similar to women. Men, too, have sought liberation from their roles, and the story of their fight is poignant, ironic, and fascinating.
In this course I look at American history from the perspective that history is myth. Our histories are the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves and to each other. They are the way we explain our triumphs, our defeats, and our lapses of integrity, so that we can make sense of our past and establish our goals for the future. As such, American history is constantly being re-visioned, and not just by historians. Fictionalized accounts of historical events are often more powerful than those written by academic historians because they reach wider audiences, and historical films are even more powerful, for the same reason. But even in our everyday lives we are constantly interacting with interpretations of history, often without knowing it. In this course we examine the American stories present in academic monographs, textbooks, novels, movies, television series, music, and art, to see how and why the way we have presented our history has changed over time.
What if you were suddenly faced with a world turned upside down? With an opportunity to rewrite the laws of social organization in such a way as to create an entirely new form of government? In this course we examine the ways in which the mixing of three different "races" of people, European, African, and Native American, created a liminal space in which all things seemed possible. But just studying the Revolution and the Constitution can't really explain how it felt to be in such a situation. For that reason, students in this class are required to hold their own constitutional convention, and come up with a new constitution.
There are people in America today who argue that feminism is dead (and some who wish that were true), or at the very least, that we are now in a "post-feminist" era. Histories of women indicate that this is not only a mistaken premise, but it has been argued before. In America, at least several times. In this course we examine women's experiences from pre-1492 to the present in order to understand why feminism exists, why women have felt compelled to fight for equality in a nation which promised that "all men are created equal," why some women have fought against feminist agendas, and why women's histories are crucial to our understanding of American history.
This course falls under the rubric of the History Department's "Problems in History" series, which is designed to allow students to explore particular topics in depth. In this course we examine the histories of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from the perspective of the theories currently prevalent in Gay and Lesbian Studies, including theories about identity, sexuality, and Otherness. The course covers debates about the origins of homosexuality and looks at the ways in which identity labelling can work to both the benefit and the detriment of those being labelled. It also raises questions about sexual politics in general, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual (identity) politics in particular.
Last updated: February 16, 2000
© Karen J. Taylor