Part One: Cultural Contexts of an Emerging Trope

January 21

Course Introduction.
John Greenleaf Whittier, "Our Countrymen in Chains!"
Broadside
Poem

Am I Not a Man and a Brother?
Image

Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?
Image 1
Image 2

Sojourner Truth, "Ar'n't I a Woman?" (handout)

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January 28

Website Design Training. Class will meet in Library 18.
Lois Leveen, "Think Link."
Flight to Freedom

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January 30

Imperialism and the Noble Savage
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

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February 4

Sensibility and Sentimentality
Markman Ellis, The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender, and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. link to electronic reserve

Elizabeth Barnes, "The Politics of Sympathy." States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel New York: Columbia UP, 1997. link to electronic reserve

Mary Chapman and Glen Hendler, From "Introduction." Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture Berkeley: Univ of California P, 1999. link to electronic reserve

Karen Sanchez-Eppler, "Feminism and Abolitionism" from Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body Berkeley: Univ of California P, 1993. link to electronic reserve

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February 6

Reading Feeling
Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, "The Slave's Appeal," "Heaven Help Ye," "Christian Love," "The Kneeling Slave," "Story-Telling," "Think of Our Country's Glory," "Think of the Slave," "Little Sado's Story," "Christmas," "Our Duties," "Opposition to Slavery," "The Dying Slave," "Slave Luxuries," "Slaveholding," "Reasons for Flogging the Slaves," "Influence of Slavery on the Female Character." link to electronic reserve

Margaretta Faugeres, "Fine Feelings Exemplified in the Conduct of a Negro Slave"

Sarah Wentworth Morton, "The African Chief"

Hannah More, The Sorrows of Yamba or The Negro Woman's Lamentation

John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Hunters of Men," "The Christian Slave," "The Branded Hand," "A Sabbath Scene, " "At Port Royal"

Richard Delgado, "Empathy and False Empathy: The Problem with Liberalism" link to electronic reserve

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February 11

A Revolution in Black Literary Production
Phillis Wheatley, Front matter from Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral; "To the University of Cambridge" (two versions); "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty" (two versions); "On Being Brought From Africa to America"; "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitfield" (two versions); "On Recollection"; "A Funeral Poem"; "To the . . . Earl of Dartmouth"; "To a Young African Painter"; "America"; "To . . . General Washington"; "To Col. David Worcester"; "To Samson Occum"; "To John Thornton"

Jocelyn Moody, "Sympathy and Revolution," Sentimental Confessions: Spiritual Narratives of Nineteenth-Century African Amerian Women. Athens: U Georgia Press, 2001. link to electronic reserve

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February 13

Wheatley, cont.

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February 18

How a Slave is made a Man
Frederick Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave

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February 20

Gendering Suffering
Douglass, Narrative continued.

Frances Foster, "'In Respect to Females . . . ': Differences in the Portrayals of Women by Male and Female Narrators." Black American Literature Forum 15 (1981): 66-70. link to electronic reserve

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February 24

Phillip Lapsansky, "Graphic Discord: Abolitionist and Antiabolitionist Images." The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. link to electronic reserve

Living Africans Thrown Overboard
The Slave Trade (Moreland)
A Northern Freeman Enslaved by Northern Hands
Slave Trade (Biard)
Interior of a Slave Ship
Flogging of a Slave Fastened to the Ground
Kidnapping of a Free Negro to be Sold into Slavery
Slave Chain
Slave with Iron Muzzle

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February 27

Sexualizing Sympathy

John Stedman text excerpts and images (handout)

"Narrative of Joanna; An Emancipated Slave, of Surinam" Boston, 1838

"The Barbarous Cruelty inflicted on a Negro - at Surinam"

"Joanna"

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March 4

Short and Sweet: Sentimental Stories
Frederick Douglass "The Heroic Slave"

Lydia Maria Child, "Slavery's Pleasant Homes"

Lydia Maria Child "The Quadroons"

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March 6

Selling Suffering, Singing Suffering: Cultural Manifestations of Abolition
Elizabeth B. Clark's "'The Sacred Rights of the Weak': Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America," Journal of American History (September 1995): 463-493.link to electronic reserve

Lee Chambers-Schiller, "'A Good Work Among the People': The Political Culture of the Boston Antislavery Fair." The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin and John C. Van Horne. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1994. link to electronic reserve

The Anti-Slavery Harp; A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings, Compiled by William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1848)

BONUS TRACK: The Sentimental in Our Era

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Part Two: Read 'Em and Weep

March 18

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

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March 20

Stowe, continued.

Karen Sanchez-Eppler, "Then When We Clutch Hardest: On the Death of a Child and the Replication of an Image." Sentimental Men: Masculinity and the Politics of Affect in American Culture Ed. Mary Chapman and Glen Hendler. Berkeley: Univ of California P, 1999. link to electronic reserve

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March 25

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March 27

Linda Williams, "'A Wonderful, Leaping Fish': Varieties of Uncle Tom." Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.link to electronic reserve

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April 1

William Wells Brown Clotel

April 3

Brown, continued.

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April 8

Frances Harper,

Letters,1853-64. Introductory paragraph; "On Free Produce"; "Breathing the Air of Freedom"; "Oh How I Miss New England"; "Miss Watkins and the Constitution"; "To Mary Brown"; "To John Brown"; "My Lungs Are Weak"; "An Appeal for the Philadelphia Rescuers"; Thank God That Thou Has Spoken"

Poetry, 1853-64. "To Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe"; "The Syrophenician Woman"; "The Slave Mother"; "Bible Defence of Slavery"; "Eliza Harris"; "Ethiopia"; "The Slave Auction"; "A Mother's Heroism"; "The Fugitive's Wife"; "Eva's Farewell"; "The Tennessee Hero"; "Free Labor"; "Lines"; "The Dismissal of Tyng"; "The Slave Mother (A Tale of the Ohio)"; "To the Cleveland Union-Savers"

Essays and Speeches, 1853-64. "The Colored People in America"; "Could We Trace"

Letters, 1865-75. "I am in the Sunny South"; "What a Field There is Here"

Poetry, 1865-75. "An Appeal to the American People"; "Lines to Charles Sumner"; "Bury Me in a Free Land"; "The Freedom Bell"; "The Change"; "Words for the Hour"; "President Lincoln's Proclamation of Freedom"; "Fifteenth Amendment"; "Aunt Chloe (including 'The Deliverance,' 'Aunt Chloe's Politics,' 'Learning to Read,' 'Church Building,' and 'The Reunion')"

Speeches, 1865-75. "The Great Problem to Be Solved";

Fiction, 1865-75. "Fancy Etchings" 4/24/73;

Poetry, 1865-75. "John and Jacob"

Essays and Speeches, 1876-92. "Enlightened Motherhood";

Poetry, 1893-1911, "The Martyr of Alabama"

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April 10

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

April 15

April 17

Jacobs, continued.

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April 22

April 24

Wilson, continued.

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