Female students in California make up 57% of enrollment in AP courses, but they don’t have a course to learn about their own history. AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government are dominated by men’s voices, with all nine required primary documents for AP U.S. Government being written by men.
Two Sacred Heart Schools history teachers, Kristen Kelly and Serene Williams, decided to change this.
In 2022, they applied for a Schlesinger teaching grant, a research grant offered by Harvard’s Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, which is one of the largest libraries of women’s history archives in the country.
Initially, the duo planned to write women into the AP U.S. Government course. However, after realizing the depth of the archive, they decided to create a standalone course: AP United States Women’s History, or WAPUSH. “This is much bigger than U.S. Government,” Williams said.
Williams became passionate about political science and women’s studies in college. She taught women’s history, a UC-approved elective course, as well as AP U.S. History, AP U.S. Government, and AP Comparative Government at Sacred Heart. “I just could not believe the lack of women in the curriculum,” Williams said.
Kate Ragatz, a Sacred Heart senior and head of the course’s nationwide student campaign, got involved with the course proposal after taking classes with Kelly and Williams her sophomore year. As someone who has taken many AP courses in the humanities, Ragatz noticed an imbalance between female and male voices in the curriculum and was eager to support the course’s proposal.
“There’s such a disparity, and it really contributes to this notion that women were not and are not central or important to the founding of America, the political sphere, or just society as a whole,” Ragatz said.
Last summer, Williams met with Advanced Placement Program head Trevor Packer to discuss the proposed course. AP teachers are expected to teach from the Course Exam Description, and Williams pointed out that there aren’t named women in the APUSH CED.
In order for the course to be added, Kelly and Williams must get 250 letters of support from high schools and 100 from universities. “We’re 80% of the way there with universities. High schools are a little harder because teachers aren’t as specialized,” Ragatz said.
Part of the letter has to say that schools have a teacher who wants to teach the course. “A lot of high school teachers don’t feel comfortable teaching women’s history because they don’t have the resources or aren’t specialized,” Ragatz explained.
Kelly and Williams have tried to make the course more accessible for teachers by creating a course description detailing each unit and the specific topics, movements, and figures within them.
One challenge with AP courses is that they have to be taught in all 50 states, so the CED has to be written broadly enough that it can satisfy the limitations of the most restrictive states. During the past year alone, nearly ten states have passed laws and policies restricting teaching about sexual orientation and gender.
“I think the hardest part of this process is navigating the political climate. I mean, just thinking about the executive orders that have come out,” Williams said. She is grateful that they don’t have as large an impact in California as they do in other states.
Williams also pointed out that at the university level, a lot of women’s studies programs are closing. She hopes that creating a course like WAPUSH would help to create a pipeline for students to study gender in higher education. “The political climate has actually helped us, because this is the only way to protect the teaching of women,” she said.
Williams recently spoke with an English scholar about the specific language to use in the course description. “Do we use the word patriarchy? Do we use the word intersectionality? Do we use settler colonialism? The thought that has gone into the language, to me, is really inspiring,” Williams said. “I love reading the latest historical scholarship, feminist scholarship, and then translating that from the university level to the high school level. How do you explain that to most high school students? That’s my personal favorite part of the process.”
As the primary student coordinator, Ragatz has connected with students in the Bay Area as well as nationally. She has joined Kelly and Williams to present at multiple conferences and help with research and resources for the CED. Most recently, she’s been working on a book proposal with the two educators.
This past fall, Ragatz took a class period of independent study where she researched women’s history for WAPUSH. “That was really interesting, because there are just so many voices that you don’t see in education, and a lot of stories that I identified with, which is always a good feeling to feel like you identify with people in history,” Ragatz said.
Other than that research opportunity, Ragatz has enjoyed the connections she’s made because of the course. “Having students reach out to me and be like, ‘I’m so interested!’ just gives me a lot of hope for the future,” she said.
Similar to other AP history classes, some sacrifices have to be made to choose what information gets taught. Kelly and Williams have had to undergo the complex process of sifting through many important figures, movements, and events to narrow down the course curriculum.
“One strategy we’ve used is we have a series of oral interviews we’ve been doing with people who’ve made history, and tried to highlight those people to show to students,” Williams said. “We’re trying to say, look, you know, these are people still around, and these are people who made history that we can still learn from.”
Another concern is ensuring that a dominant narrative isn’t created.
“Women’s history isn’t necessarily partisan. You want to tell the story of everyone in history because that’s the way that you’re going to get the most rich and impactful lessons from the past to implement in the future,” Ragatz said.
When AP African American Studies, a relatively new course, went through its pilot program, many states argued that certain content would have to be removed from the course. Kelly and Williams watched this process closely to learn for themselves what might get removed from their proposal. In they’re course, they’re focusing on including various perspectives.
“We have Chicana feminism, and we have disability studies in there. And we approach a lot of stuff on religion—different women of different religions. We also have conservative women. So we approach it from multiple directions,” Williams said. “We’re still thinking through what the actual words are that we’re going to use to capture the spirit of intersectionality and make sure we’re not just telling a white woman’s story.”
WAPUSH wouldn’t be a direct replacement for APUSH. Instead, it would be taken as an elective course. Packer told Kelly and Williams that to be competitive for college, students have to take an advanced U.S. history course. Because APUSH may be the last American history class students take, “it’s considered really essential that they take a general US history course,” Williams said.
Although some may think the course would be dominated by female students, Williams isn’t worried about the gender balance in her future WAPUSH classroom. “I’m a very experienced AP teacher, so students know, ‘If I’m in Miss Williams’ class, whatever that is, I’m going to be prepared for the AP exam,’” she said. She has a lot of boys from different social groups in the women’s history class she currently teaches, and she says they help further discussions. This is a shift from about 15 years ago, when she said she’d only have one boy in the class.
So far, the course has gained over 3,000 signatures on a petition calling for its adoption by the College Board.
Ragatz hopes the course will be made official soon and appreciates the work that’s been done up until this point. “It’s so important for me to look toward the generations who are younger than us. I just think about how much I would have appreciated learning historical narratives I could identify with when I was a freshman, sophomore, junior, or now. That’s the most inspiring part of the work,” she said.
“WAPUSH is such a good opportunity to get hands-on academic experience while learning more about women in history and historical narratives that aren’t typically featured,” Ragatz said. There are opportunities to do social media, research, and other advocacy for the course. Williams encourages any interested students to contact Ragatz at [email protected] or through the WAPUSH student website.
