Course Description: Anglo-American abolitionists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries frequently invoked images of black suffering in their anti-slavery writings. This course examines both white activists' obsessions with black bodies in intense emotional and physical pain, and the diverse ways that African Americans of the period responded to this trope. We will examine visual images and cultural phenomena (such as abolitionist gift fairs) along with fiction, non-fiction prose, and poetry. Authors will include Aphra Behn, John Gabriel Stedman, Phillis Wheatley, Sarah Wentworth Morton, Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, William Wells Brown, and Frances Harper. Readings by literary critics, historians, and cultural critics are also included.

Prerequisites: two English courses at the 200 level or consent of instructor. Conference.