Course Outline
For explanations on written assignments and student presentations, please
see the handout entitled, Assignments and Grades. Articles and book
chapters are either in the Resource tab of Classes or found in the Bobcat
Database noted in the brackets.
September 2
Introduction
September 4
Memory and History
Morrison, Toni. “Site of Memory.” In What Moves at the Margin,
edited by Carolyn C. Denard, 65-80. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 2008. [Classes]
Willis, Susan. “Memory and Mass Culture.” In History and Memory
in African American Culture. Edited by Genevieve E. Fabre and
Robert G. O’Meally, 178-187. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994. [ebrary]
Berlin, Ira. “Coming to Terms with Slavery in Twenty-First-Century
America.” in Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of
American Memory. Edited by J. O. Horton and L. E. Horton,
1-17. New York: The New Press, 2006. [Classes]
RESPONSE PAPER
September 9
Memories of Africa
Equiano, Olaudah. Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah
Equiano: Or Gustavus Vassa, The African. Edited by Shelley
Eversley, Chapter 1. New York: Random House, 2004. [ebrary]
Carey, Brycchan. “Olaudah Equiano: a Critical Biography,” http://
www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/biog.htm [online]
Carey. “Where Was Olaudah Equiano Born?” http://
www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/nativity.htm [online]
Postma, Johannes. "Atlantic Slave Trade (Overview)." In The
American Mosaic: The African American Experience. ABC-CLIO,
2010. https://getit.library.nyu.edu/go/9365377
Screening: Adi, Hakim, Stuart Hall, et. al. A Son of Africa: The
Slave Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (2004).
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
September 11
Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” http://
oldpoetry.com/opoem/15977-Langston-Hughes-The-NegroSpeaks-Of-Rivers
Cullen, Countee. “Heritage.” http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/41763Countee-Cullen-Heritage
McKay, Claude. “Africa.” http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/19684Claude-McKay-Africa
Pleck, Elizabeth. “Kwanzaa: The Making of a Black Nationalist
Tradition, 1966-1990.” Journal of American Ethnic History 20:4
(Summer, 2001): 3-28. [JSTOR]
Mazama, Ama. “The Afrocentric Paradigm: Contours and
Definitions,” Journal of Black Studies 31:4 (March 2001): 387405. [JSTOR]
White, e. Frances. “Africa on My Mind: Gender, Counterdiscourse
and African-American Nationalism,” in Dark Continent of Our
Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability 115150. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001. [Classes]
RESPONSE PAPER DUE
September 16 The Middle Passage
Equiano, Chapter 2 [ebrary]
Toyin, Falola and Amanda Warnock. "Weathering the Middle
Passage (Overview)." In The American Mosaic: The African
American Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2010. https://
getit.library.nyu.edu/go/9365377
SCREENING: Roots episode 2
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
September 18
Hartman, Saidiya. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic
Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
September 23
Hartman, Saidiya. “The Time of Slavery.” The South Atlantic
Quarterly 101:4 (Fall 2002): 757-777. [Project Muse]
Ebron, Paulla A. “Tourists as Pilgrims: Commercial Fashioning of
Transatlantic Politics.” American Ethnologist 26:4 (Nov.
1999): 910-932. [JSTOR]
Holsey, Bayo. “Slavery and the Making of Black Atlantic History.”
In Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade
in Ghana. Chapter 6. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
2009. [ebrary]
FIND A THESIS STATEMENT IN HARTMAN, EBRON OR HOLSEY
September 25 “Birth of a Nation”
Bay, Mia. “In Search of Sally Hemings in the Post-DNA Era.”
Reviews in American History 34:4 (December 2006): 407426. [Project Muse]
Gordon-Reed, Annette. “’The Memories of a Few Negroes’:
Rescuing America’s Future at Monticello.” In Sally Hemings
and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory and Civic Culture,
edited by. J.E. Lewis and P.S. Onuf, 235-252.
Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1999. [Classes]
Smithers, Gregory D. “Introduction” in Slave Breeding: Sex,
Violence, and Memory in African American History. 1-19.
Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2012. [ebrary]
Berlet, Ira Lee. "Racialized Slavery." In The American Mosaic: The
African American Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2010. https://
getit.library.nyu.edu/go/9365377
FIND A THESIS STATEMENT IN BAY, GORDON-REED OR SMITHERS
September 30
Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of
Revolution. Chapter 1. Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2006. [Classes]
SCREENING: Spielberg, Steven et. al. Amistad Part I
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
October 2
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Slaves On Screen: Film and Historical
Vision. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002: 1- 93.
[Skim pp. 17-68]
SCREENING: Amistad Part II
RESPONSE PAPER
October 7
Building the Old South
Carson, James Taylor. “’The Obituary of Nations’: Ethnic
Cleansing, Memory, and the Origins of the Old South.”
Southern Cultures 14:4 (Winter 2008): 6-31. [Project
Muse]
Tadman, Michael. “The Interregional Slave Trade in the History
and Myth-Making of the U.S. South.” In Chattel Principle:
Internal Slave Trades in the Americas. Edited by Walter
Johnson, 117-42. New Haven: Yale University Press.
[ebrary]
Moore, John Hebron. "Plantation Culture and the Expansion of
Slavery (Overview)." In The American Mosaic: The African
American Experience. ABC-CLIO, 2010. https://
getit.library.nyu.edu/go/9365377
FIND THESIS STATEMENT IN CARSON OR TADMAN
October 9
Who was Uncle Tom?
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Volume I http://
www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/203
SCREENING: Porter, Edwin S, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1903); Clips from
Pollard, Harry A. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927);
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS PERTAINING TO VOL. 1
October 14
NO CLASS
October 16
Complete Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.
SCREENING: Clips from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1987)
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
October 21
Slave Testimony
Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon
Northup. Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1853. Chapters 1-12
[Free online; read any version]
SCREENING: McQueen, Steve and John Ridley. 12 Years a Slave
(2013)
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
October 23
Complete Twelve Years a Slave
RESPONSE PAPER
October 28
The Civil War
3 Group Presentations: To be discussed
October 30
Reconstruction
3 Group Presentations: To be discussed
November 4
Theoretical Interlude
Rosenstone, Robert A. “Does a Filmic Writing of History Exist?”
History and Theory 41:4 (Dec. 2002): 134-144. [ebrary]
Anne Anlin Cheng. Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis,
Assimilation, and Hidden Grief. Oxford University Press:
2000. Chapter One [ebrary]
Ron Eyerman, “Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of
African American Identity.” In Cultural Trauma and
Collective Identity. Edited by J.C. Alexander, et. al.
California Scholarship Online: March 2012. [University
Press Scholarship online]
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
November 6
History, Trauma and Humor
Carpio, Glenda. Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of
Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008:
Introduction and Chapter 2. [ebrary]
Sammond, Nicholas. “’Who Dat Say Who Dat?’ Racial Masquerade,
Humor, and the Rise of American Animation.” In Funny
Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood.
Edited by D.I. Goldmark and C. Keil, 129-152. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.
[Project Muse]
RESPONSE PAPER
November 11 Neo-Slave Naratives
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Press, 1987. (read to
at least p. 73)
Smith, Valerie. “Neo-slave Narratives.” The Cambridge Companion
to the African American Slave Narrative. Edited by Audrey
A. Fisch (Cambridge University Press, 2007). [Cambridge
Collections Online]
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
November 13
Morrison, Beloved (read at least to 165)
Childs, Dennis. “’You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet’: Beloved, the
American Chain Gang, and the Middle Passage Remix.”
American Quarterly 61:2 (June 2009): 271-297. [Project
Muse]
THREE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
November 18
Morrison, Beloved (complete book)
Response Paper
November 20
Randall, Alice. The Wind Done Gone: A Novel. Boston: Mariner
Books, 2002.
SCREENING: Clips from Fleming, Victor. Gone with the Wind. (1939).
November 25 NO CLASS But N.B.: Assignment Due
Screen Tarantino, Quentin. Django Unchained. [on reserve; see
assignment page]
Response Paper Due on Classes by 5pm
November 27
Thanksgiving Break
December 2
Student Presentations
December 4
Student Presentations
December 9
Student Presentations
December 11
Student Presentations
FINAL PAPER DUE.