ENGL 221(S) Rewriting Slavery (Same as Africana Studies 221) (Gateway) (W)*
Slavery was surely the most divisive and vexing issue confronting the United States before 1865. Whether or not (and how) to abolish slavery was perhaps the primary issue, but behind this question lay many others whose answers were equally contested. What was the nature of slavery as an institution? What were its effects on the enslaved and the enslaver? What did the persistence of slavery say about the American experiment and American character? Though the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, at least in theory, answers to these and similar questions continue to be contested as the country has moved from reconciliation to world power to lone superpower and "defender of freedom" around the world. Reading a variety of texts about slavery from the antebellum era to the present, we will examine the ways in which slavery has been constructed and remembered in both the popular and scholarly imagination and how particular texts intervene in the ongoing debates about the place and meanings of slavery, race and racism in and to American life and culture. Likely readings include Octavia Butler, Charles Chesnutt, Frederick Douglass, Stanley Elkins, Charles Johnson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and William Styron, Gone with the Wind and several episodes of the television miniseries Roots.
Format: seminar/discussion. Requirements: consistent participation in class discussion, twenty pages of writing spread over 4 or 5 short essays.
Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19).
(Post-1900)
Hour: MATTHEWS