Sexual Revolution in the South & Women Empowerment Essay

Reflect on the material we have examined over the last several weeks about the mid-twentieth century and the so-called Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and the turn to the sex wars that developed in the 1980s.

 Focus on a theme, issue, or topic that strike you as particularly interesting, puzzling, or important. Some example include:

 marriage, dating, and courtship; sexuality and liberation movements; sex, censorship, and mass culture; reproduction, regulation, and reform? 

Consider: What is it about this topic that you want to learn more about? 

What scholarship have we read or other materials have we studied that would help you develop an historical perspective on this issue? 

Make some notes.

Now,EITHER choose TWO (or more) oral histories from the Southern OralHistory Program collection OR conduct an oral history of your own with aperson of your choice. 

If conducting an oral history interviewsyourself you may do more than one–but at least one should speak to theperiod of the sexual revolution. 

In either case, you should take somecare in exploring your options to make sure that you end up with aninterview that will end up illuminating the issues you’re interested inexploring.

 NOTE: if you’re using an interview from the SOHPcollections, it is often easier if you find two that offer a focusedcomparison and develop your essay around the similarities anddifferences in the experiences, perspectives, and assumptions of the twointerview subjects.

Ifyou’re conducting your own interview, you’ll want to make a practicalplan for scheduling the interview, make sure you have a means ofrecording it, and plan on spending about half an hour to an hourconducting the interview itself. 

Before your start, clarify with yourinterviewee how you’re going to use the interview and how you’re goingto safeguard that person’s privacy.

Asyou review and analyze your interview (or interviewees), consider therelevant scholarship and other sources we’ve examined that can helpilluminate your analysis by providing historical context, or by offeringmodels of analysis. 

Once you’ve identified the central historical issueat the heart of your essay and a body of relevant sources, write anessay that uses the oral history/histories to a) illuminate an importantissue in the history of modern sexuality and b) evaluate the efforts ofhistorians to understand and explain it.

Thegoal of this assignment is to give you an opportunity a) to criticallyanalyze and evaluate engage specific sources of your own choosing and b)to develop your own analysis of a particular historical issue orproblem.

Your essay should do the following:

• At the beginning of the essay, clearly identify the issue/problem that you will be analyzing.
• Explain the broader significanceof this issue/problem/phenomenon with respect to the history of sex inAmerican society from the colonial period through the recent past. 
• Toaddress this question of broader historical significance consider howthe issue/problem you identified has been defined and contested inparticular periods. 
• Are the individual’s views of sex, her/his lifeexperiences, and so on consistent or incompatible with the sexual norms,regulations, identities, or ideologies of the time period she/isdescribing and previous periods?
• If relevant in your case, focus on the Southern aspectof your interviewee’s experience. How does this person’s view of theperiod differ from what you might expect from scholarship and otherdocuments produced largely by people living in other parts of thecountry?
• Consider the question: What doesthis person’s attitudes and experience tell us about the history of theso-called “Sexual Revolution” (in the South)? 
• Towhat extent was this person self-consciously political?
•  Was thisperson’s approach conservative? reformist? radical?
•  What is mostinteresting or significant about this person’s unstated assumptions–orthe relationships between this person’s unstated assumptions and thisperson’s articulated beliefs and decisions?
• In addition to the oral history, your essay should critically engage at least two other sources.You can choose any texts from the syllabus or in-class handoutsthat you see fit:
•  it is up to you to show how the documents (and thethemes they address) relate to one another