Course Content and Outcomes Guides (CCOG)

CCOG for HST 205 archive revision 202104

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Effective Term:
Fall 2021 through Winter 2025

Course Number:
HST 205
Course Title:
History of Women in the U.S.: 1877 to Present
Credit Hours:
4
Lecture Hours:
40
Lecture/Lab Hours:
0
Lab Hours:
0

Course Description

Examines women's work in the maturing industrial economy, women's reform activities, and changing family and social relationships. Explores class, ethnic, racial, and regional diversity. History courses are non-sequential and may be taken in any term and in any order. Audit available.

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

  • Articulate and interpret an understanding of key historical facts and events in U.S. History from 1877 to the present, and their particular impact on women.
  • Identify the influence of culturally based practices, values, and beliefs to analyze how historically defined meanings of difference affect human behavior.
  • Identify and investigate historical theses, evaluate information and its sources, and use appropriate reasoning to construct evidence-based arguments on historical issues.
  • Construct a well-organized historical argument using effective, appropriate, and accurate language.

Social Inquiry and Analysis

Students completing an associate degree at Portland Community College will be able to apply methods of inquiry and analysis to examine social contexts and the diversity of human thought and experience.

General education philosophy statement

This course requires students to focus on the history of women in the United States from 1877 to the present from a variety of different perspectives, considering the ways in which the experiences of people in the past have been shaped by factors like social class, gender, race, religious belief, and ideology. Students must also evaluate relationships between different cultures, whether defined in terms of political identity (such as interactions between the people of two or more nations) or in terms of cultural groups within a larger society. One of the key goals of this course is to provide a perspective on the contemporary world that is grounded in a robust and accurate understanding of the past, ultimately in the name of encouraging a greater sense of social responsibility.

Outcome Assessment Strategies

Assess by using any combination of the following:

  • Exams
  • Essays
  • Oral Presentations
  • Research projects
  • Book critiques
  • Journals
  • Class participation and discussion in small and large groups
  • Other creative assignments

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Competencies and Skills:

  • Analyze and evaluate the position of women in American society
  • Analyze, evaluate, and connect issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class as they apply to women           
  • Compare and contrast the experience of diverse groups in American society
  • Analyze, interpret, and evaluate written, artistic, or other evidence in its historical context
  • Recognize and identify historical roots and parallels to current issues
  • Listen to and appreciate the experience of students from a variety of backgrounds
  • Communicate effectively orally and in writing an understanding of a variety of historical topics, the historical process
  • Evaluate how concepts or values change over time
  • Analyze and evaluate primary and secondary sources
  • Evaluate different interpretations of past events and construct your own interpretation
  • Think critically about the relationships between past and present events and issues
  • Demonstrate college-level communications skills with an emphasis on writing (and may include listening and speaking)

Themes, Concepts, and Issues:

  • Victorian family system
  • Sexuality and reproduction
  • Gender-based work roles
  • Variations in women’s lives based upon race, class, ethnicity, region, religion, ideology
  • Westward expansion and frontier experiences
  • Expanding educational opportunities
  • Technological developments
  • Emerging advertising and consumer culture
  • Religion
  • Significance of Industrialization and urbanization on family and work
  • Expanding opportunities in professions and the paid labor force
  • Abolition, slavery, and the lingering effects
  • Civil War and Reconstruction
  • Social, economic, political, and legal reform movements
  • Women’s rights and women’s suffrage movement
  • Racism, nativism, ethnocentrism