HIST 114(S) Families and Social Change: An Introduction to the Study of Private Life

For most people, "family" connotes a set of experiences that are defined as private and governed by emotion; but family life is greatly influenced by the more public phenomena of ethnic and racial identification, class position, religious affiliation, and ideologies of gender, as well as national and international structures of economic and political power. This course will use selected episodes from four centuries of American family experiences to explore the theories and methods by which historians study private life in its social context. Our focus will be dual: we will examine the impact of public policies on personal experience, and we will try looking at "macro" events (the invention of a new nation, international migration, global economic change and technological advances, the alleged revolution in the traditional Western system of gender) through the lens of the choices required within the life of an individual family member. Our materials will include-besides scholarly analyses-such primary documents as popular films, autobiographies, fiction, political arguments about voting and schooling, maps, house designs, fashions, and cemetery design. The classes will involve mostly reading and discussion, with occasional workshop sessions with documents. Evaluation will be based on class discussion and a series of short papers designed to develop students' skills in research, analysis, and writing. Enrollment limited. Preference to first-year students.

Hour: TRACY