Freedom and Slavery in the American Imagination

The main course in this FIG will examine how the concepts of freedom and slavery shaped nineteenth and twentieth century American literature and culture. The relationships between these two identity-forming ideas in the political, social, and cultural history of the United States has been artistically rendered, challenged, and re-invented through literature. Students will explore how evolving definitions of what it meant to be enslaved informed American understandings of freedom. The organization of this course will be thematic rather than chronological; however, the majority of the works studies will address how the aftermath of slavery and the Reconstruction Era affected literary and cultural productions, particularly, though not exclusively, between the Civil War and World War II. The intersection discourses of race, gender, class, and sexuality will inform our reading of writers like Frederick Douglass, Harriett Jacobs, Herman Melville, Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, and William Faulkner. To augment the readings, students will also discuss our visual culture (especially film) uses its powerful media to engage, transform, and transmit images of the inevitably intertwined ideas of freedom and slavery.