CLCS 244 Enslaved: American Slavery and its Legacies in Literature, Film and Culture
Over four hundred years ago the first slaves reached the new colonies in what is now the United States of America, founding a history of pervasive, discriminatory, racialist ideology that reaches all the way into our present. In a first part, this introductory course will trace the history and culture of slavery from the slave trade to the civil war and emancipation and into the era of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement and beyond. Students will read a range of responses to slavery in the form of slave narratives, legal texts and political treatises that show the many ways black Americans have shaped the culture of the United States in all areas of cultural and political life.
In a second part, the course investigates through films, memorials, literature and economic texts how the legacy of slavery continues to shape our world today. In this part, students will grapple with questions of memory and memorializations, the systemic economic inequalities that continue to haunt the United States, cross-cultural conceptions of enslavement and the contentious question of reparations.