Advanced seminar: Literarische Gattungen und Gattungstheorien und Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur - Slave Narratives and Neo-slave Narratives
Advanced seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date
Thursday, 20.10.2011 10:15 - 11:45
Studiengänge (für)
MA [neu] Literarische Gattungen und Gattungstheorien;
LA [modularisiert] Vertiefungsmodul: Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur;
LA [alt], MA [alt], D [alt] [wahlobl.]
Slave narratives are a significant African American literary tradition and a distinct American genre. Written by former slaves, the narratives offer autobiographical accounts of how the authors lived through slavery and managed to escape into liberty. Highly popular in the late 18th and early 19th century, the texts introduced African American voices to the public debate on slavery and played an important role in popularizing the abolitionist cause. The genre also established certain aesthetic strategies and themes that still influence contemporary African American writers.
To arrive at an informed understanding of the genre, we will begin this course by reading two classic slave narratives – the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself (1845) and Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861). As we study these texts, we will pay attention to the gendered differences in the authors’ experiences and representational choices. In a next step, in the second half of the semester, we will trace the influence of the genre on contemporary African American literature. We will examine how Ishmael Reed’s postmodernist novel Flight to Canada (1976) and Toni Morrison’s most recent novel A Mercy (2008) take up the slave narrative tradition to re-envision both the legacy of slavery and the future of American race politics.
Required Books:
Douglass, Frederick and Harriet A. Jacobs. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. An American Slave and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Modern Library / Random House, 2004.
Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. New York: Vintage / Random House, 2008.
Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. New York: Scribner, 1998.
A course reader with secondary texts will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Admission settings
The course is part of admission "Anmeldung gesperrt (global)".
