The Afterlife of Slavery & 21st Century Black Literature: Reading Africa and the African Diaspora

Three credits · Undergraduate

The afterlife of slavery, Saidiya Hartman argues, is not freedom. However longed for, however storied, freedom is still a promise, still to come. How does this structure of the aftermath manifest in 21st century novels about slavery and other forms of unfreedom? How do writers reckon with “the past that is not past”? How can we think about contemporary anti-Blackness—surveillance, Black Lives Matter, the policing of the pandemic—through the lens of slavery’s afterlives? Prerequisite: 9 credits of ENGL. Three credits.