History 265g Understanding Race and Sex Historically

History 265g
Understanding Race and Sex Historically

TTh 9:30-10:50am, SGM124 Office Hours: Wednesdays 2pm-4pm
Professor Diana Williams Office Location: SOS 277
[email protected]

Teaching Assistants Angelica Stoddard
Alicia Gutierrez [email protected]
[email protected]
Friday Sections: 10am & 11am 12pm & 1pm

Course Description
Historians have produced important new insights about the past by exploring the interplay
between the categories of race and sex. Through analysis of key historical events and
movements, this course demonstrates that race and sex, rather than attributes fixed in nature, are
socially and historically constructed.

Learning Objectives
This course is designed to prepare students for informed citizenship by teaching them how to
analyze compelling national social problems concerning race and sex in historical terms. This
will include building such skills as chronological reasoning, contextualization, historical
argumentation, and unpacking complex visual sources. In terms of content, students will learn
how race and sex have structured and been structured by laws concerning marriage, slavery,
immigration, and public space. They will also learn how science has been enlisted in the service
of granting legitimacy and a sense of permanence to transitory ideas of race and sex. They will
obtain familiarity with key watershed events in U.S. history from the mid-seventeenth through
the early twentieth centuries, including the framing of the U.S. Constitution, the lead-up to and
aftermath of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, and the development of federal immigration
policies in the late nineteenth century.

SYLLABUS CONTENTS
Grading Breakdown
Things to Purchase
POLICIES

Attending Exams
Lectures and Discussion Sections

About Lecture
About Thought Cards
About Discussion Sections
About Office Hours and Email
If you are taking Writing 140: Dropping or Withdrawing from History 265
Blackboard
Clickers
Cell Phones, Laptops, Tablets, &c.
Class Notes Policy
Disability Accommodations
Assistance for Struggling Students
Schedule of Classes

Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 1

GRADING BREAKDOWN Second Midterm Exam: 25%
First Midterm Exam: 25% Final Examination: 30%
Discussion Section: 20%

All exams will have two parts: one essay (60%) and several short response questions (40%). We
will distribute several potential essay prompts prior to each exam. Each midterm will address
mainly material covered prior to the exam itself. The final exam will be cumulative, covering all
the topics we have discussed over the course of the semester. The dates of your mid-terms are in
the Schedule of Classes. Please be aware that you cannot pass the course unless you have taken
all the exams and passed the following academic integrity quiz.

Blackboard Quiz on Academic Integrity
You are required to earn a perfect score on a quiz based on a 15 minute online tutorial
designed by USC library and Student Judicial Affairs.

The web-based TUTORIAL is followed by a quiz, but that is NOT the Blackboard-based
quiz we require you to take. Do NOT take the quiz on the same site as the tutorial! Only
when you have taken OUR BLACKBOARD-based quiz will your score appear in
Blackboard’s“My Grades.” Students who ignore these instructions and fail to take the
correct quiz will earn no credit.

You may take the quiz as many times as you like, but you must earn a perfect score no
later than 5pm Wednesday of Week 3. After that deadline, we will reduce your overall
course grade by 5% for every day you fail to do this. No exceptions.

Things to Purchase (available from the USC bookstore)
• Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: Norton Press, 2010).
• TurningPoint RF polling “clicker”; register @Blackboard/Tools
• 1 pack 3” x 5” index cards (for daily thought cards)
• 3 blank 8.5” x 11” blue books for exams--give to your TA in section by week 3.
• Three 5” x 8” index cards (for exam “cheat sheets”)

The syllabus contains MANY other readings, but there is no pre-assembled course
pack to purchase. Most readings are on Blackboard; others are hyperlinked through this
syllabus (be sure that you have logged into “MyUSC” before clicking any of the links).
I have also placed some on ARES, USC’s Automated Reserves website. Your tuition
and fees already entitle you to access to all of this content through the library, usually by
using the “Find by Citation” page. By teaching you how to access additional required
readings, this course will help develop your research skills.

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 2

ATTENDANCE & GRADING POLICIES
Attending Exams
Catastrophic circumstances preventing you from attending exams will be considered on
a case-by-case and written basis. The professor defines what constitutes a
catastrophe. Make-up midterms, if granted, will not offer a choice of questions and will
therefore be much harder. No make-up exam will be offered for the final.

Attending Lectures and Discussion Sections
About Lecture
In lectures, I introduce new material that complements, but does not duplicate, the
assigned readings. Each lecture builds upon and refers back to what was covered before.
Students who not attend regularly will find it very difficult to catch up.

About Thought Cards
To encourage active listening, I require students to bring to the start of each
THURSDAY lecture a written question or comment you would like to raise about the
topics and/or readings covered that week. This “Weekly Thought Card” should be on a
3 x 5 index card bearing the following:

1. Your Name,
2. Your Teaching Assistant’s name,
3. The date of the lecture in which you turn it in.
4. A question or comment about the issues addressed in the previous lecture/

readings, OR
5. A multiple choice question or poll based on the lecture or readings.

We will grade these cards on a SAT/UNSAT/Zero basis to help assess course
engagement, and lower your grade if you repeatedly fail to respond thoughtfully. While
it is fine to ask about something in a previous class that you have not understood, please
do not use this exercise exclusively for that purpose; the point is to demonstrate that you
have thought about the readings/lecture material.

We will also assess course engagement through clicker polls. (The scores you receive in
Blackboard on these clicker polls are purely for your own information; we only monitor
whether you participated.) Repeatedly failing to complete thought cards or to participate
in clicker polls WILL harm your grade, and will be definitive in borderline cases.
Because the professor does not “excuse” absences, you do not need to notify her about
your absence from lecture.

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 3

About Discussion Section
You must be enrolled for a History 265 discussion section as well as in the main lecture
class. Attendance and participation in your section (including grades on any assignments
your teaching assistants administer) is on an equal footing with the weekly lecture
sessions, and will comprise a significant part of your grade. Your teaching assistant will
give you a separate syllabus for your discussion section at its first meeting.

About Office Hours and Email
Each of the History 265g instructors makes two office hours per week available to
students, all of which are posted in Blackboard. We prefer office hours to email for
addressing questions requiring more than a quick response.

If you are taking Writing 140: dropping or withdrawing from History 265
Because Writing 140 requires concurrent attendance in a specific Social Issues General
Education course, you may not remain in a History 265-affiliated Writing 140 course
if you drop or withdraw from History 265. For most students, dropping BOTH
History 265 and Writing 140 has serious consequences. Please consider these
consequences when balancing your commitments; History 265 instructors cannot be
lenient to those who fail to meet the minimum passing requirements. The Writing 140
program director handles petitions for exemption from the 2-course link and requires
that the student do passing work in History 265 through week 12, even if it is no longer
possible for the student to earn a passing grade in History 265.

COURSE TECHNOLOGY POLICIES
Blackboard--Required; check regularly!
This course presumes that students have regular access to and facility with the internet,
including the course website on Blackboard. The URL for the site is: https://
blackboard.usc.edu/. To access it, you must activate your USC e-mail account, which
you can do by visiting the ITS activation page at http://www.usc.edu/firstlogin. For
assistance, contact Blackboard’s 24 hour tech support online or at 213-740-5555.

Clickers--Required at all lectures
After you buy a Turningpoint RF polling device from the USC bookstore, log into
Blackboard and register the device under the “Tools” menu for this course. Label
your clicker with your contact information in case you misplace it. For help with
clickers, please contact the manufacturer’s technical support hotline and/or USC’s
Center for Scholarly Technology. If your clicker stops working and it’s not the fault of
the battery or a problem of being on the wrong “channel,” you can exchange the clicker
for a working one at the bookstore (not all of the employees there may be aware of this
policy, so if you have a problem, please ask for Raymond McDermott).

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 4

Cell Phones, Laptops, Tablets, &c.
Laptops, tablets, and cell phones pose a distraction in a lecture setting, not just for the
students who use them, but for everyone else, including the lecturer. We therefore
prohibit their in-class use except as part of an official disability accommodation. Not
being used to writing by hand is not a disability; moreover, writing by hand stimulates
the brain and is good practice for our handwritten in-class exams. Please mute/silence
and put away your devices before class. If you choose to make your own audio
recording of my lectures (we recommend the Livescribe™ Pen for this purpose), please
keep in mind the following class notes policy.

Class Notes Policy

Notes or recordings made by students in this class based on my lectures, on discussion group, or on class
discussions may only be made for the purposes of individual or group study, or for other non-commercial
purposes that reasonably arise from your membership in this class. Permission to make notes or recordings
falls within my discretion as the instructor and as informed by instructional purposes, classroom order,
property interests, and other reasonable considerations arising in the academic context. Notes and
recordings of this class may not be exchanged or distributed for any commercial purpose, for
compensation, or for any purpose other than your personal study. Unless authorized by the University in
advance and explicitly and in writing permitted by me, commercial or any non-personal use of class notes
or recordings constitutes an unauthorized commercial activity in violation of the Student Conduct Code,
and students who violate this policy are subject to University discipline. As the instructor in this course, I
retain intellectual property rights in the lecture material pursuant to U.S. copyright law and California
Civil Code 980(a)(1). Misuse of course notes or recordings derived from lecture material may subject you
to legal proceedings.

Disability Accommodations
Should you need to request accommodations based on a disability, please register with
USC’s Office of Disabilities Services. A dated letter of verification from this office
specific to the current semester will make you eligible for accommodations they
recommend. We cannot accommodate last-minute requests, so please let us know of
your needs well in advance.

Assistance for Struggling Students
Students should make use of office hours, the resources of the Writing Center, and the
Center for Academic Support. Although CAS offers tutoring, they will only provide
tutors for this course if large numbers of students fill out CAS’s online tutor form early
in the semester requesting help in History.

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 5

History 265g
Understanding Race and Sex Historically

Week 1: SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
Readings:
White Slavery (January 14 & 16):
Questions:
Painter, Nell. The History of White People, Introduction & Chapters 3
(“White Slavery”), 4 (“White Slavery as Beauty Ideal”), 5 (“The White
Beauty Ideal as Science,” & 6 (“Blumenbach Names White People
‘Caucasian’”)

Berger, John. Chapter 3 of Ways of Seeing. New York: Viking Press,
1973.

What does it mean to say that race is a social construction? What does it
have to do with gendered ideals of beauty and power? Why are white
people called ‘Caucasian’ and why is it important to understand the
history of that idea?

Week 2: Sex and the Origins of Racial Slavery (January 21 & 23)

Readings: Fischer, Kirsten. “‘False, Feigned, and Scandalous Words’: Sexual
Slander and Racial Ideology among Whites in Colonial North Carolina.”
Chap. 10 In The Devil's Lane: Sex and Race in the Early South, edited by
Catherine Clinton and Michele Gillespie, 139-53. Oxford, 1997.

Block, Sharon. “Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual
Coercion in Early America.” In Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in
North American History, edited by Martha Hodes, 141-163. NYU, 1998.

Documents: Excerpts from Colonial Virginia Laws Regulating Sex Among Servants,
Slaves, and Masters, from Major Problems in the History of American
Sexuality, ed. Kathy Peiss.

Questions: How was the regulation of sex linked to the development of racial slavery
in the North American colonies?

To avoid grade deductions, you MUST earn a perfect score on the
BLACKBOARD ACADEMIC INTEGRITY QUIZ
BY 5PM WEDNESDAY OF WEEK 3.

You may take the quiz as many times as necessary to do this.

***You may drop History 265g without penalty by 5pm Friday of Week 3.***

Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 6

Understanding Race and Sex Historically

Week 3: American Slavery, American Freedom? (Jan. 28 & 30)

Readings: Painter, Chapter 8 (“Early American White People Observed”)

Fields, Barbara J. “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of
America.” New Left Review 181 (1990): 95-118.

Documents: Declaration of Independence (1776), Preamble (ending with “let Facts be
submitted to a candid world”).

U.S. Constitution (1789): Article I Sections 2 & 9; Article IV Section 2.

U.S. Naturalization Act of 1790

“The Memoirs of Madison Hemings, as told to S.F. Wetmore,” Pike
County (Ohio) Republican, 1873 (republished here).

Questions: When, why, and how did ideas of race emerge in North America? How
were issues of race and sex integral to revolutionary ideals of liberty?

Weeks 4 & 5: “Jacksonian Democracy” & Whiteness 1820s-60 (Feb. 4, 6, & 11)

Readings: Painter, Ch. 9 (“The First Alien Wave”), 11 (“English Traits”), 12
(“Emerson in the History of American White People”) & 13 (“The
American School of Anthropology”).

Documents: Short virtual exhibit (with 1840s & 50s reactions) concerning “The Greek
Slave” (1848): http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/sentimnt/grslvhp.html

Nott, Josiah. “The Mulatto A Hybrid.” The Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal 29, no. 2 (1843): 29-32.

Questions: What did race and sex have to do with emerging ideals of citizenship and
belonging in the first half of the nineteenth century? What was
“amalgamation”?

Feb 13: ****FIRST MID-TERM EXAM (in-class)****

Week 6: Sex and Emancipation (Feb. 18 & 20)

Readings: Kaplan, Sidney. “The Miscegenation Issue in the Election of 1864.”
Journal of Negro History 34, no. 3 (1949): 274-343.

Documents: Two letters concerning Union soldiers and their wives--written in 1865.

Questions: How did questions of sex affect racial politics--and vice versa--as the
U.S. moved toward abolishing slavery?

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 7

Understanding Race and Sex Historically

Week 7: Social Equality and Citizenship (Feb. 25 & 27)
Readings:
Rosen, Hannah. "A Constitutional Convention." In Terror in the Heart of
Documents: Freedom : Citizenship, Sexual Violence, and the Meaning of Race in the
Questions: Postemancipation South, 134-175. UNC, 2009. (Ares)

Kelley, Blair L.M. “The Color Line and the Ladies’ Car: Segregation on
Southern Rails Before Plessy,” in Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and
African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson, 33-49.
UNC, 2010.

Reconstruction Act of 1867

Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (13, 14, & 15)

In what ways did Reconstruction succeed at shifting the national
conversation about race and sex? In what ways did it fail?

Week 8: Obscenities (March 4 & 6)
Readings:
Painter, Chapters 14 (“The 2nd Enlargement of American Whiteness”)
Cases:
Questions: Van Slyck, Abigail A. "The Lady and the Library Loafer." Winterthur
Portfolio 31, no. 4 (1996): 221-42.

Frisken, Amanda. “Obscenity, Free Speech, and ‘Sporting News’ in 1870s
America.” Journal of American Studies 42, no. 3 (2008): 537-77.

Railroad v. Mary E. Miles, 55 Pa. 209 (1867).
State of Indiana v. Gibson, 36 Ind. 389 (1871).
Pace v. Alabama, 106 U.S. 583 (1883).

What was segregation? Why was it effective to use sex to justify it?

Weeks 9-10: Lynching, Race Suicide, and Actuarial Science (March 11, 13, & 25)

Readings: Painter, Chapters 17 (“Roosevelt, Ross, and Race Suicide”), & 18 (“The
Discovery of Degenerate Families”)

Wolff, Megan J. “The Myth of the Actuary: Life Insurance and Frederick
L. Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro.” Public
Health Reports 121, no. 1 (2006): 84-91.

Documents: Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases (New York
Age Print, 1892).

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 8

Understanding Race and Sex Historically

Questions: How do you explain the phenomenon of lynching? What changed about
understandings of race and sex as slavery and the Civil War receded into
memory?

March 27: ****SECOND MID-TERM EXAM (in-class)****

Week 11: Sex, Work, and the Chinese Question (April 1 & 3)
Readings:
Luibhéid, Eithne. “A Blueprint for Exclusion: The Page Law,
Prostitution, and Discrimination against Chinese Women,” in Entry
Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. 2002. p. 31-54. (ARES)

Tsu, Cecilia, “‘Independent of the Unskilled Chinaman’: Race, Labor,
and Family Farming in California’s Santa Clara Valley,” Western
Historical Quarterly 37 (2006) 475-495.

**Week 12 is the final withdraw deadline.**

Students who withdraw by this week receive a “W” next to History 265 on their transcripts; after that date,
they must receive a letter grade, even if that grade is a failing one.

Week 12: Mapping the Gay World (Apr. 8 & 10)
Readings:
Chapter 8 of Elizabeth Reis, ed. American Sexual Histories (2001) This
Questions: chapter, which is on Blackboard, consists of an abbreviated scholarly
article by George Chauncey (“Christian Brotherhood or Sexual
Perversion?”) + 3 very short historical primary documents.

Chauncey, George. “Building Gay Neighborhood Enclaves: The Village
and Harlem.” Chapter 9 of Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and
the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940. 1994. Pages 227-267
(plus endnotes at 430-437).

Somerville, Siobhan. “Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the
Homosexual Body." Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 2 (1994):
243-66.

What were some of the means by which people in the late 19th & early
20th centuries defined sexuality as queer? How did the changing urban
landscape influence the construction of queer identities in the early 20th
century? What was new about the category of the “homosexual”?

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 9

Understanding Race and Sex Historically

Week 13: Modernity and the Melting Pot (April 15 & 17)

Readings: Painter, 19 (“From Degenerate Families to Sterilization”), 20
(“Intelligence Testing of New Immigrants”), 21 (“The Great Unrest”), 22
(“The Melting Pot a Failure?”), & 23 (“Anthroposociology: The Science
of New Immigrants”).

Stern, Alexandra M. “Sterilized In The Name of Public Health: Race,
Immigration and Reproductive Control in Modern California.” American
Journal of Public Health 95, no. 7 (July 2005): 1128-1138.

Documents: Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927).
Week 14:
Read the short “virtual exhibits” at http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/
eugenics/list2.pl

The Business of Popular Eugenics (April 22 & 24)

Readings: Rosenbaum, Ron. "The Great Ivy League Nude Posture Photo Scandal."
The New York Times Magazine, January 15 1995, p. 26-56.

Mitchell, Michelle. “The Colored Doll is a Live One! Material Culture,
Black Consciousness, and Cultivation of Intraracial Desire.” In Righteous
Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after
Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 2004), p. 173-196. (on ARES and ebrary)

Questions: Lovett, Laura L. “‘Fitter Families for Future Firesides’: Florence Sherbon
and Popular Eugenics." Public Historian 29, no. 3 (2007): 69-85.

How did eugenics come to pervade popular culture in twentieth century
America?

Week 15: Is Gay the New Black? (April 29 & May 1)

Readings: The New York Times Room for Debate: Is the Civil Rights Era Over? 19
July 2013, especially Butler, Paul. “Gay is the New Black.”

Mumford, Kevin. “The Miscegenation Analogy Revisited: Same-Sex
Marriage as a Civil Rights Story.” American Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2005):
523-531.

Questions: Somerville, Siobhan B. “QUEER LOVING.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian
and Gay Studies 11, no. 3 (2005): 335-370.

How does understanding race and sex historically help inform our
understanding of the contemporary national conversation about marriage
and same-sex relationships?

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 10

Understanding Race and Sex Historically

FINAL EXAM: In our regular classroom, per the exam schedule in the Schedule of
Classes. Please note: the exam date and time is beyond our control.
No make-up exam will be offered for the final. Please do not ask for a make-up on the
final; we will automatically refuse your request.

History 265g: Understanding Race and Sex Historically, Spring 2014 11