HST 109 - Introduction to History: Gender & Jim Crow

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirement HU and DE.
This course explores the advent of Jim Crow in the American South when southern politicians took away the right to vote from African American men and imposed the stringent racial and social code of segregation in southern society. In our study of the period, we will ask: “Why did Jim Crow emerge?” and “How did southern men and women exercise power of participation in southern society in that framework?” We take a particularly close look at how rhetorical strategies and ideas about womanhood and manhood shaped the transition. Frequent writing assignments inclusive of analytical essays and analyses of primary sources will help you to develop your own perspectives on the development of Jim Crow as well as evaluations of the utility of gender as a category of analysis for interpreting political transformations.