Chicago style referencing

Total of 7 ½ pages

Assignment 1 – 1 page

Read chapter 6 of Through Women’ Eyes, paying particular attention to “Reading into the Past” Leonora Barry, p. 311, and Primary Sources: Ida B. Wells, ‘Race Woman’, ‘The Woman Who Toils’, and ‘The Higher Education of Women in the Postbellum Years’. 

Describes how the writings and/or images shown in the documents that this chapter showcases convey a sense of how Black women and White women distinguish themselves as similar and different from one another.

Analyzes how women of this time period (1865-1900) struggled to define a notion of equality that was inclusive to all, despite the many racial and economic differences among them.

Assignment 2 – 1 page

Read chapter 7 of Through Women’s Eyes, paying particular attention to the short blurbs by Emma Goldman (p. 369) and Clemencia Lopez (p. 386) in the Reading into the Past sections of this chapter. 

Study the content guide on The Black Experience and Westward Migration as well as the primary source documents on Representing Native American Women in the Late Nineteenth Century; Jacob Riis’s Photographs of Immigrant Girls and Women, and these online resources on Alice Austen’s life and work:

Alice Austen House Home Page

Alice Austen Biography

Alice Austen Photography Collection

analyzes :

How conflicting ideas on how women placed themselves in American society at this point in history are reflected in the images and/or writings.

How women’s self-presentation of these ideas sheds light on their perspectives of U.S. historical narratives as well as the nation’s evolving relationship with the world.

Assignment 3 – 1 page

Read chapter 8 of Through Women’s Eyes, on Women’s Associations and The Progressive Era; and particularly the Primary Source documents on Black Women and Progressive Era Reforms; Parades, Picketing, and Power: Women in Public Space; and Modernizing Womanhood. Optional: Also visit 
Women and Social Movements website for more ideas.

analyzes:

How women defined equality for themselves as women vis-a-vis men;

How women addressed racial and economic differences within American society in their activism.

Assignment 4

The post-Civil War years marked the birth of children’s author Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957), who chronicled the experiences of her family’s journey across the Midwest and Great Plains of the United States as a pioneering family. Wilder wrote nine books in her much heralded Little House series, as well as a final memoir about the latter years of her life with her husband Almanzo Wilder and daughter Rose Wilder Lane. The popular television series “Little House on the Prairie” was based on the book series, and numerous museums and historic sites have been established throughout the country marking the areas where her family lived and documenting such things as the recipes her family used to cook some of the meals that the books describe. These efforts to preserve the history of her family have created an interesting archive of both fictional and historically reliable artifacts that offer us — as students of women’s history — a unique opportunity to study.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder archive also offers us a model of what public history might look like within the field of U.S. study part of that archive and write analysis of your findings. Here’s what I’d like you to do: 

Part 1 – 1 ½ page

a.
define public history.

Read the chapters 6-8 from Through Women’s Eyes.

Familiarize yourself with the concept of public history by visiting the
 National Council on Public History and 

Explore the Little House series:

Read an excerpt from one of the nine books in the Little House series or view one of the episodes from the Little House on the Prairie television series. Both the books and DVDs from the television series are widely available through public libraries. You can also find excepts of the books by searching 
Google Books.

If you read these books as a child or watched the Little House on the Prairie series on television, you may draw on your memories of the stories.

b.
summarizes the excerpt you chose. Please be sure to indicate which book or which television episode you chose Or, summarizes what you learned about Laura Ingalls Wilder from two of the following museum sites:  

Visit the 
Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum and at least one more of the websites below on Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. If you live near one of the museums or historic sites dedicated to her family, you might want to physically visit the site if you have the time to do so.

Little House on the Prairie Museum

Wilder Homestead in Malone NY

Rose Wilder Lane’s life history from the Library of Congress American Memory Project

Little House in the Census

Part 2 – 3 pages

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write essay.

The Laura Ingalls Wilder archive that we studied on Laura Ingalls Wilder offers a model of what public history might look like within the field of U.S. Women’s History.  study part of that archive and write an analysis of your findings.

In this essay, you are considering the sources you looked at in regard to “historical” sources such as websites about Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, or the books she wrote in the children’s book series “Little House on the Prairie”, or the more recent TV show version of the book series.
Consider these various sources as examples of “public history”–that is, history presented in a more accessible [and more creative] form than is usually presented in textbooks.
NOW–based on your reading of our textbook, especially chapter 7, pages 356-367, how do these sources about Laura Ingalls Wilder stand up to the documented history in our textbook about women and the western expansion period? Are the ‘public history’ sources you looked at: websites, children’s books, TV series, historically accurate? Or do they add something to your understanding of the history of the period that the textbook does not provide? Make some evaluative/analytical comments in your essay, along with describing the sources you reviewed.

As you are writing your analysis, make sure that your essay includes:

Brief descriptions of each of the resources in the Laura Ingalls Wilder archive that you consulted. You also may include resources shared by your classmates in the M3 Workshop: Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Analysis of how you as historian interacted with, interpreted, and engaged with the resources.

A synthesis of how your interpretations might provide a public contribution to the “identification, preservation, interpretation, and presentation” of women’s history in the United States for public consumption.

Critique the role of young adult literature, television series, museums, and autobiographical sources in making history relevant to the present.

Additional Resources

You also might want to consult the e-book linked below for additional information as well as the numerous e-books on the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder that are available in the Empire State College’s ebrary collection. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane : authorship, place, time, and culture / John E. Miller. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. NDL-OPAC, EBSCOhost

You might also want to revisit the 
National Council on Public History as you are writing your essay. 

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