Freeman, Joanne B. Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

How were the ever-changing roles of women in American society chronicled?

Joseph Heller writes in his book The Feminization of Quest-Romance that “American Literature equates the very essence of what it means to be American with the essence of what it means to be male. [Thus] women’s roles are identified only in relation to the male heroes whose identities they strengthen.” It can be argued that throughout much of American history, American women had few rights or...

The American Revolution, a byproduct of events both on the North American continent and abroad, unleashed a movement that focused on egalitarianism in ways that had never been seen before. Even John Adams commented on these changes in a letter to his wife Abigail. He wrote, “We have been told that that our Struggle has loosened the bands of Government everywhere. That Children and Apprentices were disobedient—that schools and Colledges were grown turbulent—that Indians slighted their Guardians and Negroes grew insolent...

In this lesson, students will be asked to learn the disputed and agreed-upon facts of the Boston Massacre in small groups and then discuss them and propose a website definition of the Massacre as a class. This lesson should not only provide students with an opportunity to look at disparate representations of so-called historical facts surrounding a very famous event that preceded the American Revolution, but will also teach them to deliberate with their classmates in a cordial fashion.

On the...