Think Historically: Sources and Methods in the Study of U.S. Slavery

Catalog description

Through studying of slavery in the United States, students gain insight into historical methods and skills, especially the analysis of primary sources. Students will analyze a variety of primary sources, including newspaper advertisements for fugitive slaves, interviews with former slaves, legal records, government reports, slave narratives, slave spirituals, material artifacts, and the diaries and letters of southern enslavers. We will think carefully about how historians have used such sources, and compare the way historians think and write about the past with other disciplines and approaches (such as literary studies).