Though a woman’s role in society is different today than it was 100, 50 or even 20 years ago, one University history class wants to go even further back.
“Goddesses to Witches,” a special section of HIST 2195, traces women’s history from 500 BCE to 1700 CE.
“There is no worshiping of goddesses or performance of witchcraft in the class,” said associate history professor Leslie Tuttle, the course’s instructor. “It’s essentially a women’s history class that examines the roles of women in ancient society by Greek and Romans and the Middle Ages and then all the way up to the early modern period in Europe through the age of the great witch hunt.”
Tuttle said students use primary source reading to understand women in ancient times, but the method has its
challenges.
Because most people were illiterate during the time period, the authors are not always representative of their subject.
“Women were even more likely to be illiterate than men were,” Tuttle said, “so there are a lot of sources describing the lives of women written by men who led very different lives. So we have to learn critical techniques to think through that barrier.”
The class has 36 students, and Tuttle said males make up about 25 percent.
While she acknowledges the class is a women’s history course, Tuttle said students learn throughout the semester to think about broader gender roles and the contrast between what it meant to be masculine or feminine in different
societies.
“So in the course of thinking about women, we’re also thinking about what it means to be male,” Tuttle said.
This is the first semester Tuttle has taught the course, which is also offered as a Women’s and Gender Studies elective. She said the class will return in the future as HIST 2014.
The class is part of a broader effort by the history department to offer more classes at the 2000 level.
Tuttle said many students enter college with enough AP or dual enrollment credit to skip the 1000-level histories.
Expanding the curriculum would provide a way for students to try out college history without committing to an upper division elective, Tuttle said.
“One of the things that we often laugh about is students who take those 1000 level survey classes, a lot of people discover that they actually like them,” Tuttle said. “So we just want to make sure that even if students can’t take those classes, but they want to try it out, that there is a kind of supportive environment you’re not surrounded by senior history majors when you do it.”
Tuttle said her class offers a different way for history majors and non-majors with an interest in ancient Rome, Greek mythology or even “Game of Thrones” to view these subjects.
Tuttle said, as with all classes, students have to make an investment of time and effort to get all they can from the course.
“There’s reading to do, there are papers to write and so forth, but I have to tell you the material, the stories are so fantastic.” Tuttle said, “You can find out how those fictional historical worlds are kind of based on real historical worlds that you can investigate in sources and translations and read about.”