Tag Archives: philosophy/religion

The Weekly Text, 26 March 2021, Women’s History Month 2021 Week IV: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Second-Feminism

This week’s Text, for the final Friday of Women’s History Month 2021, is a reading on second-wave feminism along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

While I understood the historical divide between feminisms, my understanding was mostly intuitive and instinctive. This short reading explains well the difference between first-wave feminism, to wit the Women’s Suffrage movement which culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the second wave, which began in the 1960s. The second wave, incidentally, apparently continues to today, as reversals, or the threat of reversals, of the gains made necessitate the ongoing function of a feminist movement.

In any event, this reading summarizes this history concisely, as well as supplying students with a quick way to gain this vital piece of prior knowledge about United States history.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Jeanette Rankin

“Jeanette Rankin: (1880-1973) U.S. reformer, first woman member of the U.S. Congress (1917-1919, 1941-1943). Born in Missoula, Montana, she was social worker from 1909 and became active in women’s suffrage work. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1916, she introduced the first bill to give women the vote. A pacifist, she voted against declaring war on Germany (1917). She lost her bid for a U.S. Senate seat (1918) and returned to social work. In 1940 she won reelection to the House, where she became the only legislator to vote against declaration of war on Japan. Declining to seek reelection, she continued to lecture on social reform. In 1968, at 87, she led 5,000 women, the “Jeanette Rankin Brigade,” to protest the Vietnam War.”

­­­­­­­­­Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Margaret Mead on Her Epistemological Obligation

“I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in this world.”

Margaret Mead, Quote in N.Y. Times, 9 Aug. 1964

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Cultural Literacy: Feminism

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on feminism. This is about as bare bones as these worksheets come: a one-sentence reading followed by one question.

Nonetheless, it is a solid basic introduction to feminism, and something that could prompt a conversation on, among other things, whether feminism is a “radical ideology.”

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Belva Lockwood on Women and the Law

[Arguing for the admittance of women to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court;] “The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.”

Belva Lockwood, Speech to National Convention of Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., 16-17 Jan. 1877

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Jane Addams

“Jane Addams: (1860-1935) American leader in social work and in the pacifist and woman suffrage movements. Addams is famous for her pioneering work as cofounder of Hull House, Chicago, one of the first and most influential settlement houses in America. In 1931 she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nicholas Murray Butler. Besides a number of books and articles on social problems, Addams wrote two autobiographical works: Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) and The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1931).”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

The Weekly Text, 12 March 2021, Women’s History Month 2021 Week II: A Reading and Comprehension Worksheet on Margaret Fuller

This week’s Text, in this blog’s ongoing observation of Women’s History Month 2021, is this reading on Margaret Fuller and it’s attendant vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.

Who is Margaret Fuller? I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard of her before I read the Intellectual Devotional article linked to above. She is, if nothing else, a crystal clear example of why themed history months are valuable in lifting the erasure from historical figures who are not, frankly, white males. In her short life–she died at age 40 in a shipwreck off the coast of Long Island–she accomplished enough as a writer and public figure to earn a key position in the history of American letters. To wit, she joined the Transcendental Club in Boston, where she became friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson solicited contributions from her for the influential American literary journal The Dial, to whose editorship she ascended in late 1839.

Ms. Fuller’s work at The Dial, as well as her proto-feminist book Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1844), brought her to the attention of Horace Greeley, the storied publisher of The New York Tribune. Recognizing her talent, Greeley hired at first to write book reviews, making her the first full-time book reviewer. In 1846, the Tribune deployed her to Europe, where she became the paper’s first female foreign correspondent.

All in all, Margaret Fuller’s is an extraordinary life, and one worthy of both casual and scholarly attention. I hope this small contribution from Mark’s Text Terminal brings her to the attention of high school students.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Mary Wollstonecraft

“Mary Wollstonecraft: (1759-1797) English author. Wollstonecraft is famous for her groundbreaking Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and as the wife of William Godwin and the mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Yet her political and literary life developed much earlier. Wollstonecraft was the father of an alcoholic father, from whom she tried to protect her mother, just as she helped her sister flee an abusive husband. After helping to found a girl’s school, working as a governess, and suffering years of poverty, she began to write. Her first novel, Mary, a Fiction (1788), was actually based on her own life. In the same year, she published a children’s book (later illustrated by William Blake). Her A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790) predated Thomas Paine’s famous response to Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France and was similar in kind. In her more famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman, she showed how women were an oppressed group as much as the working class. Her analysis of social roles and the effect of laws that reduced women to the status of nonpersons was a model for later feminists.

Wollstonecraft lived in France during the revolution’s most violent phase, and began an unhappy affair which led to a child and two suicide attempts, She met Godwin after her return to London, and married him in 1796. She died the following year after giving birth to her daughter Mary.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Women’s Movement

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Women’s Movement. This is a full-page worksheet with seven questions, so it is appropriate for, among other things, an independent practice assignment. But, as it is a Microsoft Word document, it is adaptable for whatever use to which you may see fit to put it.

Nota bene, please, that this document supplies students with a relatively broad overview of the Women’s Movement, rightly tracking its roots in the United States back to the nineteenth century. The text quickly pulls into sharp focus on the key issues in the struggle for equality for women; it is, therefore, a good general introduction both theory and practice in the fight for women’s rights.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Women’s Sovereignty

“The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright of self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Speech before Senate Judiciary Committee, 18 Jan. 1892

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.