SLAVERY AND AMERICAN TEXTS

Catalog description

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling book of its time not only in America but throughout the English-speaking world, typifying the cross-fertilization and cultural blending that occur in American literature with respect to the subject of slavery. We continue to see this cross fertilization and cultural blending in the works of Richard Wright in Uncle Tom's Children, James Baldwin in "Everyone's Favorite Protest Novel", and Toni Morrison in Beloved. These works continue to respond to, repudiate, or revise Uncle Tom's Cabin. The course will examine the history of representation outlined above while the readings will consist of those texts cited above and others.