Slave narratives are autobiographical texts (written or dictated) by former slaves. In the decades before the Civil War, these narratives were of utmost importance in the struggle against slavery: slave narratives gave evidence of the humanity and intellectual capacity of African Americans, exposed the inhumanity of the so called “Peculiar Institution”, and re-wrote American history from a Black perspective. However, as narratives dedicated to the liberation of all slaves, but addressing a white audience, these texts not only were powerful tools of propaganda; they also had to submit to abolitionist censorship and the tyranny of the white readers’ expectations. Still, they constitute “one of the bedrock traditions of African American literature and culture” (John Sekora), on the one hand, and American mainstream literature, on the other. We will focus on the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown and Harriet Jacobs. During class, we will mainly approach the texts from the perspectives of New Historicism, Critical Race Theory, and Gender Studies.
- Lehrende/r: Corinna Lenhardt