Slave Resistance and Moral Order in Environmental History

This course is designed to examine the avenues by which enslaved persons redefined and re-appropriated the natural landscapes that kept them in bondage into direct forms of cultural and political resistance during the antebellum period. We will investigate rice production in South Carolina, the Dismal Swamp, maroon societies, Negro Spirituals, and the Black Judeo-Christian ethic to understand how the natural environment and the institution of slavery shaped slave resistance in the United States. This course is reading and writing intensive.