Frederick Douglass and Frances E.W. Harper: Major Writers Sounding Out Freedom

Catalog description

Throughout the nineteenth century, African American writers theorized the stakes and contours of freedom in the United States. Few, however, were as prolific and celebrated as Frederick Douglass and Frances E. W. Harper. From the mid-century forward, their activist and literary work challenged expectations of racialized and gendered being in the United States and crafted new frameworks for belonging that still echo into the present. In order to traverse the various material formats, literary genres, and historical contexts that frame Douglass’s and Harper’s careers, this iteration of the course introduces “sound” as a critical intersection. The course invites students to approach “sound” as both the oral/aural content of Douglass’s and Harper’s texts and as an approach to measuring the United States’s capacities for “freedom” itself. (ENGL-LOA, ENGL-PST)