Slave- and Captivity Narratives - Single View

Slave and captivity narratives are central forms of American literature. Indian captivity narratives serve as historical documents of the colonial period and negotiate processes of colonization and creolization. Barbary Slave Narratives, tales of white American enslavement at the hands of Muslim slave traders in North Africa in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, negotiate issues of citizenship and enslavement in a historical period when the U.S.-American nation consolidated itself and legally encoded American citizenship as free and white. African American slave narratives of the antebellum period give expression to African American subjectivity and likewise engage with concepts of U.S.-American citizenship. Finally, the way narratives of captivity and enslavement have been reflected in works of fiction provides a crucial view of American national identity as a cultural endeavor.

We will read American slave and captivity narratives in relation to questions of colonial and national identity, explore the hierarchies of ‘race,’ ethnicity, religion, and culture which emerge from a close reading of the documents, and study their reflection in literature.

Please obtain the following texts:

Mary Jemison, A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (1824)

Paul Baepler, ed. White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American Barbary Captivity Narratives (1999)

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

The following additional texts will be made available on moodle:

Mary Rowlandson, The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682)

Susanna Rowson, Slaves in Algiers; or, A Struggle for Freedom (1794)

Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)

Presentation or short paper (depending on class size).

Additional credits: Modularbeit.