"Revisiting History: Modern Black Narratives of Slavery and Resistance"
ENGL 494 Honors Seminar
This course examines how black American and African writers, from the 20th- and 21st centuries, have adapted the 19th-century genres of the historical novel and the slave narrative. We look closely and comparatively at the diversity of their representations of enslavement and resistance, and examine, where relevant, the implications of turning fact into fiction. We also consider what function history itself carries, in these novels, and explore what it means not only for writers to revisit particular historical moments from the context of their own historical moment, but also what it means for us as readers to be encountering these materials from our own historical placement. While history and slavery are the central concerns of the course, geography is also significant. Two of the chosen texts are by South African authors. One, Cion, considers American slavery from an explicitly South African distance, adding a novel and controversial perspective. The other, Unconfessed, explores early nineteenth-century South African slavery, and centres, as does Toni Morrison’s Beloved, on a mother’s infanticide. We consider these texts alongside an American novel, Black Thunder, and see what happens when the subject of slavery is looked at from an international framework.
I really enjoyed Professor Kaplan's class from Autumn Quarter, but Professor Chrisman's seminar was leagues better. After the first few days, I realized just how much we were missing in the first quarter of English Honors, One thing we never did in Autumn quarter was look at secondary sources or base our reading in theory, but that all changed here. Our first few readings were dense conceptions of history, informed by Nietzsche and Lukacs. I never realized how much I took for granted in my notion of history, but these readings and the subsequent slave narratives we analyzed helped me deconstruct the concept and understand it in a completely novel manner.
A lot of what made Professor Chrisman's class so engaging was that she was very organized and seemed very invested in the subject matter. Rather than letting our discussions flow wherever we wanted to take them like in Professor Kaplan's class, Professor Chrisman prodded us in certain directions for discussion, and would often pop in herself and engage in debate. It was still a very student-led class, but it was nice having her as a guide. It helped that she was reading all the material with us and was as much learning as she was teaching.
Professor Chrisman also seemed to have greater expectations from us. It seemed like Professor Kaplan was more "go with the flow" in terms of what we were supposed to bring to class each day, with the vague outline of the final paper we were supposed to write. Professor Chrisman's syllabus, however, gave us a pretty great indication of the standards she was holding us to. As such, I made a real effort to go above and beyond. I took extensive notes on the readings rather than just doing the reading like I had before. This made my experience in the class so much better, because I came to class with an understanding of the text that went beyond impressions. I had been able to contribute in discussions before, but most of my revelations came in class. In this quarter however, I was able to bring a well-supported argument to class ready, and able to point out evidence easily since I had it in the notes.
This also made writing my essays so much easier. The hardest part about writing my final paper from last quarter was going back and finding all the evidence in the books we had read. I almost had to re-read them. This time however I had all these page numbers, quotes, and analyses already outlined, so it was simply a matter of going back and finding which ones were relevant to my essay's argument. I definitely also went about writing my essays in a much smarter manner. Rather than starting my essay and then trying to find evidence to support it, this time I did a lot of research ahead of time, summarizing each article, essay, or book, and reflecting on how it would benefit my ideas and arguments. I then synthesized these into an outline, and only then did I begin writing my essay. With a plan of attack, the writing process was made so much easier. It was still laborious, and it didn't make the process significantly faster, but it did give me a sense of peace knowing exactly what I was going to write and how I would go about doing it. The habits I developed in this seminar, and the exposure I got to bringing theory and close reading together, is going to make the process of writing my thesis for English Honors much more efficient (if not easier).
A lot of what made Professor Chrisman's class so engaging was that she was very organized and seemed very invested in the subject matter. Rather than letting our discussions flow wherever we wanted to take them like in Professor Kaplan's class, Professor Chrisman prodded us in certain directions for discussion, and would often pop in herself and engage in debate. It was still a very student-led class, but it was nice having her as a guide. It helped that she was reading all the material with us and was as much learning as she was teaching.
Professor Chrisman also seemed to have greater expectations from us. It seemed like Professor Kaplan was more "go with the flow" in terms of what we were supposed to bring to class each day, with the vague outline of the final paper we were supposed to write. Professor Chrisman's syllabus, however, gave us a pretty great indication of the standards she was holding us to. As such, I made a real effort to go above and beyond. I took extensive notes on the readings rather than just doing the reading like I had before. This made my experience in the class so much better, because I came to class with an understanding of the text that went beyond impressions. I had been able to contribute in discussions before, but most of my revelations came in class. In this quarter however, I was able to bring a well-supported argument to class ready, and able to point out evidence easily since I had it in the notes.
This also made writing my essays so much easier. The hardest part about writing my final paper from last quarter was going back and finding all the evidence in the books we had read. I almost had to re-read them. This time however I had all these page numbers, quotes, and analyses already outlined, so it was simply a matter of going back and finding which ones were relevant to my essay's argument. I definitely also went about writing my essays in a much smarter manner. Rather than starting my essay and then trying to find evidence to support it, this time I did a lot of research ahead of time, summarizing each article, essay, or book, and reflecting on how it would benefit my ideas and arguments. I then synthesized these into an outline, and only then did I begin writing my essay. With a plan of attack, the writing process was made so much easier. It was still laborious, and it didn't make the process significantly faster, but it did give me a sense of peace knowing exactly what I was going to write and how I would go about doing it. The habits I developed in this seminar, and the exposure I got to bringing theory and close reading together, is going to make the process of writing my thesis for English Honors much more efficient (if not easier).
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