This course explores the historical, rhetorical, and literary dimensions of African American abolitionist writing in the United States, focusing on how African American voices shaped the socio-political landscape through legal struggle, the press, social institutions, educational initiatives, writing, and oratory. We will examine the intersections between the socio-political realities of African American experience in the first half of the 19th century and the creative literary traditions that emerged from it.
The core texts analysed in this course range from David Walker’s ‘Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World’ (1829) and Frederick Douglass’s ‘What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?’ (1852) to Black women’s oratorial and literary traditions, represented by Maria Stewart’s speeches, social activism of Sarah Mapps Douglass, and the Female Literary Association. We will also examine periodicals published by the African American community, such as The North Star, before turning to narratives of captivity and refuge, including Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave (1853). We will further discuss the genre of captivity narratives by analysing William Still’s The Underground Railroad (1872), a post-Civil War publication that documents the era's resistance and liberation efforts.
This course encourages students to critically engage with the intersections of race, gender, and literary forms in African American writing of the 19th century. In doing so, we will analyse case studies that mark the rise of Black literary activism and abolitionism, outlining the cultural, economic, and political contexts to which the rich body of African American texts responds in critical, appreciative, and dialectical ways.
- Dozent/in: Svitlana Stupak