Teaching Responsibility
LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:
Humanities and Social Science
Learning Methods
Lecture
Seminar
Workshop
Module Offerings
5126ENGL-JAN-MTP
Aims
1)To explore the concept of slavery from an interdisciplinary, transnational and transhistorical perspective.
2)To consider the existence of different forms of slavery and its various formal representation in literature, film and autobiography
3)To examine changing discourses around slavery from early abolitionism to modern day human trafficking
4) To critique civic and public engagement with slavery and its legacies
Learning Outcomes
1.
Students will develop the analytical skills necessary to understand slavery and its legacies across different national contexts from the nineteenth century to the present day in a variety of forms and genres (autobiography, novels, poetry, drama and films
2.
Students will learn how to analyse and compare critical debates around slavery and its legacies from the eighteenth century to the present day.
3.
Students will critique concepts of representation, authorship and authority as well as trauma and subjectivity as evidenced in different texts about slavery and its legacies.
Module Content
Outline Syllabus:transhistorical and transnational discourses of slavery; what constitutes a slave text, the politics of slavery and abolitionism; authorship and authority, trauma theory and subjectivity, gender and critical race theory. Authors include Victor Sejour, Robert Southey, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, W.E. Dubois, David Dabydeen, Amy Levy and Edna O'Brien. Learning Activities
Module Overview:
This module examines slavery from a long historical interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. It will analyse a range of 'slave texts' such as autobiographies, novels about slavery, abolitionist poetry, and contemporary film, to interrogate the diverse ways in which slavery has been represented historically, and contemporary debates around that history.
This module examines slavery from a long historical interdisciplinary and transnational perspective. It will analyse a range of 'slave texts' such as autobiographies, novels about slavery, abolitionist poetry, and contemporary film, to interrogate the diverse ways in which slavery has been represented historically, and contemporary debates around that history.
Additional Information:This module interrogates the concept of slavery from an interdisciplinary, transhistorical and transnational perspective. It will analyse a range of ‘slave texts’ such as autobiographies, novels about slavery, abolitionist poetry and contemporary film to interrogate the diverse ways in which slavery has been represented. From the legal plantation slavery of America of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the illegal practice of human trafficking today, the module examines what constitutes slavery and how we might compare different forms of human exploitation. In this, the module considers the ways slave texts depict the physical and psychological trauma of the enslaved, and how these depictions relate to broader questions of freedom and citizenship, voice, racial and gender identity. he module also addresses the changing discourses around slavery, from early twentieth-century apologists to modern Afro-pessimism, and its continued legacy, as exemplified in calls for reparations, the removal of statues and the renaming of public buildings. Given the proliferation of conversations about slavery and its legacy underway today, students on the module will be encouraged to explore and critique Liverpool’s engagement with its own history of slavery.