This course is a reading colloquium that will focus on the American Southwest from the pre-Columbian area to the present day. Students will read materials for each of these and be expected to discuss relevant issues. Book reviews as well as longer written assignments are required. The countries covered range from Great Britain moving eastward to, and including, Russia. During the nineteenth century European men and women of all countries experienced some of the most dramatic and enduring changes in their daily family lives.
Daily family lives among the poor assumed different dimensions as the century evolved.
Men's responsibilities toward the family ranged from breadwinner to deadbeat. Women constantly strove to balance their productive and reproductive lives, with or without the support of kin, neighbors, charity or welfare. This course will concentrate less on the political debates and middle-class rhetoric about charity and welfare, and more on the role of the poor themselves in the transformation of charity and welfare and in their kin and neighborhood networks. The rural family, work and gender roles. The urban family, work and gender roles.