ENGL 136
Slavery and the Making of a Literary Tradition
Last Offered Spring 2018
Division I
Cross-listed ENGL 136 / AFR 136
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

How has the subject and iconography of slavery continued to preoccupy the American literary and cultural imagination? In this course, we will examine the transatlantic circulation of ideas regarding race, nation, citizenship, self-mastery, agency, and freedom in colonial and antebellum America and consider how these debates have continued to the present. We will read such authors as Phyllis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Toni Morrison. Forms will include poetry, slave narratives, novels, advertisements, broadsides, pamphlets, and other ephemera. We will also view cinematic representations of slavery, such as WGN’s Underground, the adaptation of Solomon Northrop’s 12 Years a Slave, and Issa Rae’s parody “Due North” in Insecure.