ENG-346 American Slavery and the Novel

GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts)
Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar
Consideration of the traditional Black Atlantic 18th, 19th, and 20th century slave narratives and novels, including authors such as Douglass, Equiano, and Butler, among others. Texts critique historiographies, ideologies, and models of interpretation that subjected African American cultural production and black identity to second-class citizenship. Examine the relationship between memory, writing, and historical representation and the production of hierarchical categories in the construction of racial, sexual, and gender differences. Texts engage the challenges of formal genre presented by the slave novel’s reinvention of the traditional slave narrative. 4 credits.