My goal in offering Women in America (HIST 2800) was to devise an approach that would engage non-history majors over a long, sixteen-week semester. Based on my experience teaching women’s history online for Kaplan University, I knew that students attracted to the course were not likely to have much background in history and their interest was often related to their own personal experiences. They responded especially well to the stories of the lives of other women. That is why I chose a biographical approach in the course. I organized the course around twelve women, from the American colonial era to the Civil Rights era. We focused on a single woman each week using their stories to examine specific issues about women in America and the place of women in America’s history.

Rather than requiring traditional history essays and term paper projects, I devised a set of assignments that I felt would better suit students with no background in history (or the humanities). Throughout the semester, students were asked to keep a weekly learning journal. This journal took the form of an altered book. Altered books are a strange, little craft popular among bookmakers and scrapbooking enthusiasts. The purpose is to take an existing book and re-craft it by doing all those things your mother told you never to do to books— marking, painting, and coloring the print; bending and folding pages, even ripping pages out and pasting new ones in; gluing pictures and objects onto the pages. I used to teach workshops on making altered books at the art gallery I owned in Bozeman and I thought a tactile, hands-on approach would work well with the students enrolled in women’s history.

One of the points I wanted to make to students in this course was that women had long been left out of history books, but in recent decades scholars have begun to rewrite history with women included. By looking at the past as women experienced it, we learn not only a lot about what life was like for women and how they contributed to society, but we also can gain a very different perspective on all aspects of history. To re-enforce this theme, I had students “alter” an existing history textbook.

I purchased used, hardback textbooks (they cost only $1 each) and prepared them by dividing the internal pages into 12 sections (one for each week of the course). I prepared a big box of altering materials for each student, including color photocopies of dozens of images of women throughout American history as well as some historic documents. Students were asked to express their reactions to what they learned from each week’s discussion and reading, in writing and visually, by further altering the textbooks I had provided them. Students were invited to bring their “textbooks” and altering materials to class and work on them as we talked and watched films.

The course web site visually cued off the theme of crafting a book—I had great fun designing the graphics and programming the site! Giving lower-division, non-major students the opportunity to regularly express their learning in this non-traditional format kept them engaged over the long stretch of the semester and helped them build confidence in their ability to study a subject unfamiliar to them. They seemed to enjoy it and I was impressed by their insights and enthusiasm.

Twice during the semester, students presented to the class the history of a woman they had chosen. Students were free to use whatever format they preferred for the presentation as long as it included text as well as images. In addition to the weekly learning journal/altered textbook and multimedia presentations, students took a traditional midterm and final essay exam.