Feminist History in Waves Activity

Abstract

In this activity, students research and share moments of women’s history, create a timeline on the board, then work together to draw patterns out of the historical timeline, performing a basic version of historiograpy. By laying out a thorough, if haphazard, history of women, they get to see history visually and place important events in context. Themes...

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Details

Subject Area(s):

Collective Behavior/Social Movements

Resource Type(s):

Class Activity

Class Level(s):

Any Level

Class Size(s):

Medium

Usage Notes

I conduct this activity fairly early in the semester, as it gives students a chance to get to know each other, and work together on a large project, and provides important foundational concepts and understandings that students can add to throughout the term. While I have used this activity primarily for smaller classes (10-30 students) directly related to...

Learning Goals and Assessments

Learning Goal(s):

1. Students will be able to describe the history of women’s endeavors for equal rights, treatment, and value, and to contextualize our current gender order and their life experiences in a gendered history.
2. Students will practice basic historiography and illustrate how power and gender are implicated in our understandings of history, including the "three waves" model of feminist historiography and critiques of this model.
3. Students will analyze how social movements effect large-scale, long-term social change, and Students will better understand how social movements effect large-scale, long-term social changeand the relationship between social movements and social structure.

Goal Assessment(s):

1. Quiz and exam questions regarding the three waves and feminist history; appropriate usage of feminist history data in future class discussion, writing assignments, etc.
2. Quiz and exam questions regarding the three waves and feminist history and historiography, and critiques of the three waves model; critical awareness of power’s place in historiography as displayed in future class discussion, writing assignments, etc.
3. Quiz and exam questions regarding social movements, social change, and the relationship between collective agency and social structure; writing assignments and class discussion regarding students’ idealized future and the structural change implied.