History 332

Urban Life II:  Gender, Class, and Neighborhood Communities

  • Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space and Power in Boston (2000).

Further reading:

  • Linda Kerber, “Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History,” Journal of American History 75 (1988), 9-39.  JSTOR
  • Christine Stansell, “Women, Children, and the Uses of the Streets: Class and Gender Conflicts in New York City, 1850-1860,” Feminist Studies (1982), 309-335.  JSTOR
  • Susan Saegert, “Masculine Cities and Feminine Suburbs: Polarized Ideas, Contradictory Realities,” in Catharine R. Stimpson, ed., Women and the American City (1980), 93-108.  e-Reserve

Questions:

  • Instead of a study of the traditional “big stuff” of history—politics, economic development, etc.—Deutsch’s study takes a narrower, more subtle and nuanced, yet ultimately deeply complex focus, examining the life of the city as diverse groups of women experienced it and their efforts to “[alter] the map of the city.”  Perhaps as a consequence of the complexity of her focus, Deutsch argues that this history is best examined topically rather than chronologically.
  • How does she define the problem that she is studying? How does she set it up and explore it? What is her thesis?
  • How does she present “community” in her study of Boston? Why is there such elasticity in her definition of what constitutes community? What does she mean when she states, “Space is not a character in this book, the way land or water often is in environmental history”? How does her study of this urban space fit on the continuum from a “relentlessly local” to a regional, national, or international perspective?
  • How does her study compare to the other studies that we have examined this semester?
  • What makes this study different? What questions does Deutsch ask? What contexts, relationships, concerns, tensions, conflicts, solutions does she explore? What does her study reveal about the city of Boston and its community/communities of women?

Final Thoughts:

  • Where have we come over the course of the semester, in our understanding of the “meaning” of community in America—in terms of expectations, experience, unity vs. division—as “community” changed/varied over time and space?
  • Reflect on the books that we’ve read: to what extent did they stretch your conception of community? alter your expectations?
  • Which worked best for you, and why? Would you have predicted that?