Restless Women (FNDS 3301)
This class invites you to reflect on the lives of select women from very different historical periods.
Some of the women played the roles that the society prescribed for them. Some of them stepped outside of – or even deviated from – the social norms that defined their lives. Yet many others were put in very difficult life situations in which they had to make – what we would define today as – choiceless choices, and yet choices that they had to make.
In this class, we will call them ‘restless’ – women who searched for solutions in desperate situations, for ways to express themselves, for ways to find satisfaction and redefine their own lives. Their lives can teach us about the importance of the individual in history, but they also show how our lives are defined by the context in which we live: the place and time, historical events, social norms, and the ethnicity, class, race, and gender we are born into. This means that looking at individual lives provides us with lenses to have a closer look at societies at various historical junctures and places: at norms that organize them as well as various subtle changes that they undergo.
This course covers topics in the disciplines of History, Women and Gender Studies, Literature.
Who should take this course?
Anyone who wants to know how and why to break the rules; everyone who is restless and is excited to learn!
More about this course
Course number: FNDS 3301
Number of Credits: 3
Search UM-Dearborn Class Schedule to find out more.
Dearborn Discovery Core requirements met: Intersections, Social and Behavioral Analysis
Meet your faculty member: Anna Muller, Associate Professor of History; The Frank and Mary Padzieski Endowed Professor in Polish/Polish American/Eastern European Studies
One of the benefits of taking a Foundations course is gaining a faculty mentor that can support you throughout your college career. Get to know Anna Muller, faculty member for Restless Women.
Anna Muller comes from Gdańsk, Poland. She loves reading, sharing, telling, and listening to stories – her love for history is hence deeply linked to the constant presence of various stories in her life.
In search for a new dimension, she decided to travel to the United States to attend the history graduate program at Indiana University, Bloomington. Ever since the completion of the program, she has been researching and teaching history. Occasionally, she embarks on a role as a curator for a museum exhibit – all in search of yet another dimension of telling a story.
She loves taking students to Poland to show them the richness of the culture and the world that she grew up in, but also to expose them to the circumstances in which they need to learn something new about themselves. She believes that by traveling and thinking about history, the roads that people mentally and physically travel, we all grow and expand in our understanding of the world and our place in it.
Have questions about this course? Email Dr. Muller at [email protected].