Slavery and Freedom

Catalog description

What did slavery and freedom mean across time and place from the 16th century to the present? The emergence of the modern world was shaped by the blood and toil of people in varying degrees of bondage, who helped knit distant shores into transnational networks of trade and empire, and fueled a global public square of debate over the concept of human rights. This course explores the archives, texts and images that these historical figures produced or inspired, to enter the slaving paths, plantations, palaces and parliaments of Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and South Asia. Within these settings lie the answers to the questions that we will consider: how did political economy, law, culture, as well as power relations and tropes of difference, such as race, caste, class, religion, gender, and sex, produce variant forms slavery and ideas about freedom in various parts of the world? We will examine enslaved cultures, communities, and resistance within comparative frames of reference, reflect on their relationship with diaspora, and consider the legacies of these pasts in the worlds that we inhabit.