Prepare answers for the following questions. On the day of the exam, we will choose one for you to write about. Your essay should answer the question, bringing together material from readings,
lectures, and films (Ikwe and A Midwife’s Tale). The keys to a successful essay are answering all parts of the question and using specific examples (with names, dates, etc.) to illustrate your
points. In general, the more details you can provide, the better.(Each one around 100 words)
1. Compare and contrast the kinds of labor performed by Native American, African, and European women in colonial America. How did ideas about race and gender influence the kind of work that women
did? What was the relationship between a woman’s work and her social status? Did it change during wartime?

2. How did early American women find ways to assert power and resist authority in the patriarchal societies they inhabited? In your answer, choose 3 dimensions of women’s lives—sex, religion,
family, community, law/the courts—to answer the question. Evaluate, as well, any changes over time.

3. Gender frontiers are created when two cultures with differing ideas about gender interact. Where in the lives of Pocahontas, Tituba, and Ikwe, among others, have we seen clashes on the gender
frontier? Were women able to effectively navigate this frontier, or did they generally come out on the losing end of such interactions?

Book information :

Nancy Cott et al., eds., Root of Bitterness: Documents in the Social History of American Women (2nd ed.)

Elaine G. Breslaw, Tituba, Reluctant Witch of Salem

Camilla Townsend, Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma