HUX 532 - SLAVERY IN HISTORY AND LITERATURE
Each assignment is due in the instructor’s mailbox during the week indicated below. Count Week 1 as the first week that classes begin and Week 15 as the final week of the term. Trimester dates are listed at the upper left hand corner of your registration form.
All papers must be typed and mailed in before the assignment deadline. All papers should include citations of assigned texts where relevant; your research paper should include citations of all sources and a bibliography using the MLA Handbook format. Send in an extra copy, marked “For HUX Files,” and keep a copy for yourself. Also, keep a copy of the title page of the paper returned by the instructor which contains your grades, comments, and date. Send a self-addressed, stamped (with adequate postage) envelope for the return of each assignment. If you do not fully understand the assignment or need help, telephone or e-mail the instructor.
Write a 3-4 page paper on one of the following topics for each of the
first three sections; your final paper should be between 10 and 12 pages.
The first three assignments require you analyze and synthesize the assigned
readings in respect to specific topics; please make sure that you understand
what the assignment is and what aspect or aspects of the readings you are being
asked to focus on. Since many of the topics are quite broad in their scope,
you will also need to make your discussion well-focused and selective. For the
research paper, it will be necessary to read materials not specifically assigned
for the final section of the course. Given the moderate length of the research
paper, you should try to narrow its focus somewhat so as to be able to discuss
your topic in some depth.
Week 3
1. Discuss, in some detail, the relationship between the major elements, features or characteristics of slavery. Give your own definition of slavery based upon your discussion.
2. Discuss and evaluate the following quotation from Orlando Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death (pp. 341- 342):
It has been my objective in this book to come to a definitive statement of the fundamental processes of slavery, to grasp its internal structure and the institutionalized patterns that support it. Throughout this work, however, the ghost of another concept has haunted my analysis, and in this final chapter I have tried to exorcize it. That is the problem of freedom. Beyond the socio-historical findings is the unsettling discovery that an ideal cherished in the West beyond all others emerged as a necessary consequence of the degradation of slavery and the effort to negate it. The first men and women to struggle for freedom, the first to think of themselves as free in the only meaningful sense of the term, were freedmen. And without slavery there would have been no freedom.
We arrive then at a strange and bewildering enigma: are we to esteem slavery for what it has wrought, or must we challenge our conception of freedom and the value we place upon it?
Week 6
1. In his Politics, Aristotle accepts and defends the institution of slavery as part of the natural order of human relationships. How and why could he have taken this position? What arguments could be made against this position, particularly in respect to “human nature?”
2. Discuss the influence of one or more economic, political, social and/or religious institutions and/or organizations on the nature and structure of slavery in the societies we have studied so far, providing illustrative examples.
3. Has there been, in your opinion, any significant change or evolution in the nature of slavery from its earliest known history to the end of the seventeenth century AD? If so, in which ways did slavery evolve? Do you observe any pattern in these changes? If not, why not?
4. It has been suggested that under certain conditions it was or may have been preferable to have been a slave rather than a free person. Do you agree? If not, why not? If so, under what conditions would slavery be preferable? Provide illustrative examples.
Week 101. Discuss some of the variables that might have influenced the nature of the relationship between master and slave, drawing examples from any of the slave or slave-owning societies you have studied. How could people who considered themselves decent and moral human beings have nonetheless owned slaves?
2. Compare and contrast American slavery with one or more other systems of slavery we have studied, discussing the significance of major similarities or differences.
3. Discuss some of the unique and/or distinctive aspects of Afro-American slave culture, including their origin, social context and function.
4. Discuss the origins of slavery in the United States. How and why did slavery develop differently in different parts of the country? What were some of the variables responsible for these differences?
Week 15 1. Research and discuss in detail slave narratives as a literary genre. Compare slave narratives (including others in addition to those assigned) with Beloved and Kindred or other works of literature dealing with slavery in terms of how they are structured, the way they are written and what they tell us about masters, slaves, the institution of slavery and any other aspect of American slavery.
2. Research and discuss the aftermath and legacy of slavery in the United States, focusing on the period from the Emancipation Proclamation to the present day. Try to include as many different kinds of evidence, including literature, in your discussion as possible.
3. Research and discuss in detail one or more of the controversial issues in the study of slavery.
4. Research and discuss in some detail slavery in a society not discussed in the Course Guide.
5. Research and discuss in some detail slavery in the modern world, comparing and contrasting it to other forms of slavery we have studied.