American Studies Study Guide
TERMS AND CONCEPTS:
1. Sex and Gender
What do they mean, what are the differences between the two?
Gender is a social construction. Sex refers to biological differences that are unchanging; gender involves the meaning that a particular society and culture attach to sexual difference. Because the meaning varies over time and among cultures, gender differences are both socially constructed and subject to change.
Male/Female (sex) vs. Masculine/Feminine (gender).
2. Race and Class
Issues surrounding the ways in which classifications based upon race and class are discussed in several of the readings. Be prepared to give examples from the readings of some of the differences in opportunities, freedoms, work, and legal protections that were available to women based upon these distinctions.
In the preindustrial economy, women did both heavy physical labor and skilled labor. As female slaves and servants, they toiled on others peoples farms; as mills girls they tended dangerous spinning machinery for twelve hours a day. Even middle-class houswives experienced a tremendous amount of housework-heavy physical labor and unremitting toil-work that was similar to wage labor. Nonetheless, in the the Early Republic, fathers permitted their daughters more freedom to choose a husband. For example, Eliza Lucas ran her father's plantation while he was away as royal governor. Rejecting the first two suitors her father selected, she made her own decision as to whom to marry. However, women held limited freedoms due to the Cult of Domesticity/True Womanhood, becoming hostages in their own homes and out of the public sphere to pressure to maintain the status quo during a time of dramatic change. She chose a wealthy planter-a choice consistent with the martial strategy of her class. When race and class intersected, as it did for Ida Wells Barnett, who had the financial means to purchase a ticket to ride a Ladies train car, she was physically ejected for being black.
1. Sex and Gender
What do they mean, what are the differences between the two?
Gender is a social construction. Sex refers to biological differences that are unchanging; gender involves the meaning that a particular society and culture attach to sexual difference. Because the meaning varies over time and among cultures, gender differences are both socially constructed and subject to change.
Male/Female (sex) vs. Masculine/Feminine (gender).
2. Race and Class
Issues surrounding the ways in which classifications based upon race and class are discussed in several of the readings. Be prepared to give examples from the readings of some of the differences in opportunities, freedoms, work, and legal protections that were available to women based upon these distinctions.
In the preindustrial economy, women did both heavy physical labor and skilled labor. As female slaves and servants, they toiled on others peoples farms; as mills girls they tended dangerous spinning machinery for twelve hours a day. Even middle-class houswives experienced a tremendous amount of housework-heavy physical labor and unremitting toil-work that was similar to wage labor. Nonetheless, in the the Early Republic, fathers permitted their daughters more freedom to choose a husband. For example, Eliza Lucas ran her father's plantation while he was away as royal governor. Rejecting the first two suitors her father selected, she made her own decision as to whom to marry. However, women held limited freedoms due to the Cult of Domesticity/True Womanhood, becoming hostages in their own homes and out of the public sphere to pressure to maintain the status quo during a time of dramatic change. She chose a wealthy planter-a choice consistent with the martial strategy of her class. When race and class intersected, as it did for Ida Wells Barnett, who had the financial means to purchase a ticket to ride a Ladies train car, she was physically ejected for being black.