Difference between revisions of "328 2010--Week 1 Questions/Comments"
From McClurken Wiki
| Line 7: | Line 7: | ||
It also seems like a Catch-22 to be in this course now. Learning about Women's history separate from "men's" history empowers the women by allowing them to be a distinct categorization, but also segregates Women's history and makes it seemingly inferior to Men's history. I have no idea where to stand on the separation... --SSellers | It also seems like a Catch-22 to be in this course now. Learning about Women's history separate from "men's" history empowers the women by allowing them to be a distinct categorization, but also segregates Women's history and makes it seemingly inferior to Men's history. I have no idea where to stand on the separation... --SSellers | ||
| + | |||
| + | In response to SSellers, I think it is important to remember that up until recently, history has been dominated by men because men were the ones who were literate. Therefore, history came from the male's perspective. I am not sure if that makes women's history inferior, just harder because it takes deeper analysis to find where women fit into history and how they felt. I mean, men and women share the same history. Their roles within it, however, were different and it takes a women's studies course to discover where women fit into the world during any given time. --Erin Sanderson | ||
| + | |||
| + | Overall in this reading, I was interested in how each author defined women. “Definining ‘American Women’s History'” by Kate Haulman, shows how complex American Women’s History is just by looking at the separate words: “American” “Women’s” and “History.” Focusing on the “Women” aspect, Kate Haulman mainly looks at the word “women” in opposition to men and a lump category that all individuals who identify themselves as women fit into. Gisela Bock in “Challenging Dichotomies in Women’s History” looks at the word “women” in terms of the dichotomy of sex versus gender and how people identify themselves (“sex” being biological, “gender” being social). As I read Antonia Castañeda’s essay, “Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History” the definition of “women” became even more complex in very important ways because she argues that you can’t look at women as one lump category, you have to reject the idea of a common sisterhood, because such a thing does not exist. Castañeda states, “Women’s gender experiences and definitions were as divers as the cultures from which they came”. Based off of these readings it is clear that no two scholars have the same definitions, so it is important to realize that categories and definitions are dynamic, changing with time and interpretation. -- Erin Sanderson | ||
