Settling Accounts with Settler Societies: Strategies for Using Australian Women's History in a United States Women's History Class

Abstract

TRANSNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE APPROACHES to women's history have started to influence the way instructors teach the United States women's history survey course. Ellen Carol DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, for example, introduce transnationalism as a theme of the third edition of Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U. S. Women's History.' Emphasizing the global context of the United States and the movement of people and ideas across national borders, the editors include articles about gender relations across North American frontiers, the international connections and tensions among female reformers, and the lives of immigrant women in the United States.2 To build on developments like these, women's historians need to discuss further the challenges of integrating transnational approaches into the teaching of United States women's history and to exchange teaching ideas that develop overlapping American and global contexts.3 With these goals in mind, this article offers a strategy for using Australian women's history in a United States women's history survey course. Mixing some Australian women's history into a United States women's history survey can be a provocative way to explore gender