Photograph of a suffragist, courtesy of American Memory at the Library of Congress.

• Cultural Change
• History in Quilts
• Kate Chopin's The Awakening: No Choice but Under?
• Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia
• Remember the Ladies: The First Ladies
• Scripting the Past: Exploring Women's History Through Film
• Voting Rights for Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage
• Who Were the Foremothers of Women’s Equality?
• Women in the White House
• Women’s Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs
• Women’s Suffrage: Why the West First?

• African-American Women On-line Archival Collections
• Documents of Civil War Women
• Kate Chopin: A Re-Awakening
• Lire les Femmes Écrivains et les Littératures Africaines
• National First Ladies Library
• Scribbling Women
• U.S. Women's History Workshop
• Victorian Women Writers Project
• Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1775-1940
• Women of the West Museum

Exploring Women's History

"I had never lived out of my father's house, nor in any way assumed a separate life from the other children of the family... I had never been obliged to think for or take care of myself, and now I was to be launched literally on an unknown sea, travel towards an unknown country, everything absolutely new and strange about me, and undefined for the future..."

—Jessie Benton Fremont, A Year of American Travel, 1878

Jessie Benton Fremont's travelogue of her trip out west in 1849 reveals the social attitudes and assumptions concerning gender roles, racial prejudice, and class distinctions characteristic of the times. Although she had the unusual opportunity and rare privilege to travel for pleasure, Fremont faced and overcame many challenges as a woman traveling by sea and land across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Her passionate descriptions of both external events and internal experiences and feelings throughout her "voyage into the unknown" allow readers of today insights into the social and cultural context in which Fremont lived and into the mind and heart of one woman who met the challenges of her environment with courage and determination.

Women's History Month provides an ideal opportunity for students to learn about and connect to the lives, struggles, and achievements of women in the past to better understand the world today. You can use the EDSITEment lesson plan, Scripting the Past: Exploring Women's History Through Film, to have students analyze Fremont's travelogue and adapt it into a film script. This lesson takes students through a series of steps to help them learn not only about the lives and times of the women whose stories they read and transform, but also about the processes of filmmaking and of interpreting narratives from people of other times and places in ways that respect their lives while giving new meaning to our own.

In addition to the travel narrative of Jessie Benton Fremont, Scripting the Past includes links to the memoirs of four other women who defied their gender roles, their class distinctions, or both. Students choose among these five historical figures, conduct research on their subject, and then adopt the perspective of the screenwriter and decide how to translate the "real" woman into a representation in film.

A related lesson, Women's Suffrage: Why the West First? has students research other women especially involved in the Western suffrage movement and supply some important facts from their biographies that support the granting of full voting rights to women in several Western states. Students take a stand, supported by historical evidence, as to whether or not a single theory can explain why the Western states were the first to grant full voting rights to women.

EDSITEment offers several other lesson plans that can help you bring women's history to life in your classroom. Who Were the Foremothers of Women's Equality? explores sources that are useful for uncovering the names of women who contributed to the early Women's Rights Movement in the U.S. and assesses the significance of these individual's contributions. Cultural Change examines both the political and cultural dimensions of the arguments American women used to gain the right to vote, while in Women's Equality: Changing Attitudes and Beliefs students analyze archival materials contemporaneous with the birth of the Women's Rights Movement to appreciate the deeply entrenched opposition the early crusaders had to overcome.

Voting Rights For Women: Pro- and Anti-Suffrage presents arguments for and against suffrage for women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and gives examples of how those arguments were expressed in a variety of media. EDSITEment lesson plans Remember the Ladies: The First Ladies and Women in the White House showcase the important political and social contributions, including fighting for suffrage, accomplished by First Ladies in the White House. All these lesson plans offer innovative ways of learning about the role American women have played in shaping the nation.

EDSITEment also has lesson plans that allow your student to celebrate and explore the artistic contributions of women. Pioneer Values in Willa Cather's My Antonia explores Cather’s novel and its strong female protagonist, situating it as “an archetypal tale that fully illustrates the struggle of American pioneers.” Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is a powerful story about Edna Pontellier’s struggle to find her place in society without compromising her artistic and personal desires, a topic explored in the EDSITEment lesson plan Kate Chopin's The Awakening: No Choice but Under?. Students might examine the relationship of women to rich folk traditions by studying Folklore in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, or by examining the art of quilting, often a medium of expression by women, in the two EDSITEment lessons History in Quilts and Stories in Quilts.

For additional online resources to use in your class discussions of women's history, visit the selection of websites listed to the left. Here you will find a wealth of photographs, documents, and first-person narratives that students can use to investigate the social, economic, and political lives of women in America.

In ways that no textbook or secondary text can duplicate, these primary historical materials can also provide students with insights into the personal motivations of women such as Jessie Fremont, who in this passage from her 1849 travelogue reveals a lyrical and passionate appreciation for the new sights and sounds she encountered in her voyage to the West:

"I had never seen the sea, and in some odd way no one had ever told me of the wonderful new life it could bring. It stays with me in all its freshness, that first recognition of the ocean which came to me when I went on deck; that grand solitude, that wide look from horizon to horizon, the sense of space, of freshness, the delightful power and majesty of the sea--all came to me as necessities; I loved it at the first look, and I am never fully alive without it; sometimes I cannot get to it when I need it, but when I can, I go there, and am soothed and calmed and comforted if I am in trouble; if I am happy, it is only there that I feel completed by the exultant, abounding vitality and keen happiness which it alone brings to me."

Suggested Activity:

Drawing from resources available via the EDSITEment-reviewed websites listed in the sidebar, parents, teachers, or caregivers can work with their child or class on the following activity, which can be adapted for students of all ages.

Women’s History Month—Read all About It!

Women’s History Month provides the opportunity for students of all ages to celebrate the artistic, political, and intellectual achievements of women world-wide. The lesson plans listed above provide in-depth coverage of a few specific women; this activity encourages students to create their very own newspaper article on the topic. Students can use EDSITEment’s Printing Press Interactive or this PDF template to develop an article for Women’s History Monthly, a newspaper created by and for students about famous and influential women. Encourage class-mates or siblings each to investigate a woman of note and contribute to the newspaper. Using EDSITEment-reviewed resources, students can research famous painters, writers, political figures, and more, such as:

• Gertrude Stein, writer. Portrait by Pablo Picasso. Via the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Georgia O'Keeffe, artist. Via National Gallery of Art.
  • O’Keeffe biography
• Rosa Parks, Civil Rights leader. Via American Memory.
  • More resources for Rosa Parks, via American Memory.
• Martha Ballard, an 18th Century midwife. Via Do History.
• Harriet Tubman, abolitionist. Via American Memory.
• First Ladies of the U.S. (pick one; biographical information can be accessed via the left sidebar). Via the National First Ladies’ Library.
• Emily Dickinson, poet. Via the Academy of American Poets.
• Zora Neale Hurston, writer and anthropologist. Via American Studies at UVA.
• Gwendolyn Brooks, poet. Via the Academy of American Poets.
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, activist. Via American Memory.
• Marianne Moore, poet. Via the Academy of American Poets.
• Anne Frank, writer. Via the Anne Frank House.
• Sacagawea, explorer. Via Discovering Lewis and Clark.

Activity Student Instructions: Using the websites listed above (or other websites reviewed by EDSITEment) as a starting point, choose one woman to research. Since everyone finds different people interesting for a variety of reasons, a number of links are provided. Some links lead to a portrait of a woman; others lead to a painting by a female artist. Yet others lead to letters, poems, or literature about or by influential women. Each link is just a starting point. Gather resources, both online as well as in your library, and write a brief article about who the woman you selected to study is and what her contribution to society was. The questions listed below are designed to help guide you in your research and writing.

Guiding research questions:

• Who is this person? When was she alive? Where did she live?
• What contribution did she make to society? Is she a writer or an artist, a politician or a scientist? What field or fields of study did she pursue? What life experiences informed her achievement?
• What was her education like? Who were important role-models for her?
• What were her goals and how did she achieve them? What are some significant moments in her life?
• Why did this person pursue these goals? What was her motivation?
• What challenges did this person encounter? How did she overcome the challenges? Consider the historical times of the woman or women that you are writing about. Are those same challenges still present today? How are the challenges similar or different?

After you finish your “newspaper article,” use the EDSITEment Printing Press to create the newspaper, complete with headlines and places for images. You might draw a picture, or copy pictures and print them out to paste into the newspaper (be sure to read each websites’ “fair use” policy regarding use of their pictures). Pass out copies to your friends, or combine your articles with your classmates’ to make a complete newspaper!