Category: Themes

Basic Information The Culture of Domesticity, or “Cult of Domesticity” for short, was a value system that was influential to the upper and middle class during the 19th century (Keister, 2011, p. 228). It is important to note that Black and immigrant women were often excluded from the Cult of Domesticity, and the culture demanded…

Basic Information The Fifteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on February 26, 1869 and added to the Constitution of the United States on February 3, 1870 (“The 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” n.d.). The amendment was one of three constitutional amendments enacted during the Reconstruction period after the end of the Civil War (Pildes…

Basic Information  While much of the literature regarding women’s activities during the first wave of feminism tends to focus around their fight for personal rights such as suffrage, their efforts toward greater social reform are often overshadowed. Such is the case when it comes to women’s work for peace. From the movement’s significant membership of…

Basic Information Dress reform played an important role in challenging gender norms and societal expectations for women, most notably those belonging to the middle and upper-classes, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth-century. The struggle for dress reform lasted into the twentieth-century. Traditional women’s clothing consisted of constricting corsets, tight-fitting long sleeves, long and wide…

Basic Information The American eugenics movement was formed during the late nineteenth century and continued as late as the 1940s. The American eugenics movement embraced negative eugenics, with the goal to eliminate undesirable genetic traits in the human race through selective breeding. During the American eugenics movement, laws were enacted that legalized forced sterilizations and…