African American Literature and the Legacies of Slavery

From the antebellum slave narratives to contemporary historical novels about bondage, the African American literary tradition has been shaped definitively by slavery. We will assess this literary history with reference to the social functions of racial violence, the politics of slave resistance, the gendered forms of racial subordination, and the flourishing of black vernacular culture. Authors may include Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Chesnutt, Toni Morrison, Colson Whitehead, and Octavia Butler.