AMERICAN SLAVERY AND ITS LEGACY IN LAW AND LITERATURE
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HSS 403, Fall 2016 |
Professor Burt Kimmelman
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Website: http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course will examine the institution of slavery as well as both its immediate and long-term legacies in U.S. law, policy, and literature. Throughout, the course will concern itself with competing conceptions of American identity and culture and their relation to larger political, economic, as well as artistic developments and contexts.
This class will link in virtually with a class on the law, policy and literature of U.S. slavery and its legacy, which will be taught at the College of Staten Island by Professor Michael Paris, who is an attorney and associate professor of political science and global affairs. The link will take place on Tuesdays for an hour; during that time both professors and both classes will hold joint discussions on the assigned readings for the week.
COURSE TEXTS
N.B.: Most
assigned titles will be read only in excerpts.
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; see Gates below.
Du Bois, W. E. B. The
Souls of Black Folk.
Gates, Henry Louis. Ed. and Intr.
The Classic Slave Narratives.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle
Tom's Cabin.
Wheatley, Phillis. Selected poems to be found at the Poetry Foundation
website:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/phillis-wheatley#about)
Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson.
Wright, Richard.
Native Son,
The Restored Text Established by the Library of America. 1940. Intr. Arnold
Rampersad. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.
Legal Documents and Cases, and Commentary on Law Cases
Anthony Burns Case
(1851-54).
Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
The Constitution of the United States
The Declaration of Independence
Dred Scott Case
(1857).
Fugitive Slave Law
(1850).
Plessy v. Ferguson
(1896).
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
(1842).
The State v. Mann.
Armstrong, Tim. "Introduction." The Logic of Slavery, Introduction.
Jefferson, Thomas. “Notes on the State of Virginia”
Kearns Goodwin, Doris. "The Sewards' Trip South, 1835."
Murakawa, “The First Civil Right; Liberalism and Criminal Justice.”
Slavery by Another Name
(PBS Documentary).
Sugrue, Tomas. Sweet Land of Liberty Introduction and Chapter 3.
Wilkerson, E. "Introduction." The Warmth of Other Suns.
Glossary of Terms and
Definitions
Other Online Literary Resources
Humanities Resources Links: http://eies.njit.edu/~kimmelma/humanities.htm.
Writing Guides Links: http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/writing.html.
Documentation Guides Links: http://web.njit.edu/~kimmelma/documentation.html.
Abbreviations for Marking
Papers
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
* Final examination, comprehensive, essay in format, open-book; the exam question(s) will be distributed to you at least a week ahead of time. The exam essay(s) must be uploaded as a Word file in the proper place in the Assignments section of our course in Moodle.
* An end-of-term research paper (the Term Paper), to be 1500 to 3000 words (excluding bibliography) in length; this essay must be a researched, fully-documented, original and critical, discursive, polemical and otherwise argumentative essay that must include at least some detailed literary analysis (see below^^), along with a bibliography of all primary and secondary sources (again, the bibliography is not to be considered part of your word count). The essay must not be a mere report, and should be one that is appropriate to a course in literature (as opposed to, for example, a course in history, although historical matters, and/or matters of law, may be included in the essay for this course). The term paper topic is open (yet the topic must have something to do with American slavery and/or its legacy as manifested in U.S. law and literature) but must be approved ahead of time by the instructor. Beyond approval of your topic, the term paper is to be preceded by a plan for writing a successful term paper, a "Term Paper Announcement"; a model for such a plan is being provided to you, in case you'd find it useful--in this regard see the description of the Term Paper Announcement^ below.
N.B.: All papers must be word processed, double-spaced with one inch margins, spell-checked, and to the best of one's ability grammar-checked. If on occasion use is made of the ideas or words of someone else in one's writing--not only in formally submitted papers but all work you submit in this course, including the weekly posts--then the source(s) of those ideas and/or words must be cited; that is, when appropriate, your writing must be fully documented in MLA format (you must cite sourcesusing footnotes, endnotes, or parenthetical documentation, which include specific page numbers keyed to particular passages in your text, and complete bibliographical information). PAPERS NOT MEETING ALL OF THESE REQUIREMENTS WILL NOT BE READ AND WILL NOT RECEIVE CREDIT. Papers must be submitted to the instructor via Moodle only, as attachments, using a proper indentifying subject line.
* Posted online commentary of various kinds.
N.B.: Initial posts will receive a gradebut this grade is advisory only, meant only to guide you so you can get a clear sense of the expectations you must meet in our course; however, when actually grading a student's posts, at the end of the course, no post will receive a grade lower than the advisory grade, and the ultimate grade for a post could be higher than the advisory grade. (Note also that a grade of "D-" is to be reserved for posted writing that does not conform to the minimum standards as regarding protocols for writing in our courseyou are expected, in all posts to the class, to use standard writing protocols and Standard English, to have spell checked your writing before posting it and as best you can to have grammar checked itso don't write as you normally might write when texting or emailing. A "D-" may also be assigned for posts not meeting the minimum word lengthsee below.)
Initial weekly posts must be a minimum of 100 words and normally not more than 150 words. One initial post per weekly reading assignment is required.
* A group report on assigned reading for a given week, and and individual report on the term paper project.
N.B.: More than three unexcused absences from in-person class meetings will also be grounds for automatic course failure; three latenesses will be considered the equivalent of an absence.
^Term Paper Announcement (required):
Consists of 1) a descriptive paper title and subtitle, 2) a one-sentence thesis statement that includes the point of your argument, the breadth of that argument, and the arguments significant concepts and details (the sentence can be very long and contain a number of clauses, and can employ one semicolon), 3) a one- or more-paragraph description of the writing or argumentative strategy to be employed in your paper (this is not to be confused with a summary of your projected essay), 4) an alphabetized bibliography of at least three secondary sources, to be listed along with any primary sources to be used, you plan to consult as part of your research project, presented in proper MLA format (see writing and documentation guidelines above, listed with the course readings), one of which must be a hard-copy source (for the purposes of this assignment encyclopedias, dictionaries, and textbooks will not be considered as counting toward the requisite minimum number of secondary sources, although they can be used in your term paper project and should be listed in your bibliography).
^^ Term Paper (required):
Consists of: 1) a descriptive paper title and subtitle, 2) a full-length essay, 3) a bibliography in MLA format and alphabetized. For the purposes of this assignment, use must be made of at least three secondary research sources (one of them hard copy) excluding textbooks, encyclopedias and dictionaries that may also be used and should be cited if used. All sources, primary and secondary, should be included in the bibliography.
N.B.: While one resesarch paper source must be hard copy--and there is no substitute for physically going to a library to do research--a downloaded article from one of the NJIT or Rutgers library's databases can be considered as a hard copy source (it is best to check with the instructor about the suitability of such an article).
It is STRONGLY recommended that research begin with the MLA Bibliography (locally to be found at the Rutgers-Newark library research room--ask a librarian there to show you how it works).
If you don't know the difference between a primary and secondary source then find out right away; I've provided links here and in our Moodle space that will help you with this and all matters regarding researching and writing a polemical research essay.
COURSE GRADE
Final Examination, 30%
End of Term Research Paper, 20%
Term Paper Announcement, 10%
Reports (group reports--5% each, individual report--5%), 15%
Initial Posts in Response to Weekly Readings, 15%
Study Question Posts at CSI-NJIT Bulletin Board, 5%
Portfolio of Eight Best Posts, 5%
COURSE SCHEDULE
(see specifics in
Moodle)
Week 1. 9/6:
Introduction to the Course.
9/8:
Thomas Jefferson,
Notes on the
State of Virginia (1785).
The Sewards’ Trip South (a selection from Team of
Rivals by Kearns Goodwin). State v Mann and the Law of Slavery. Tim
Armstrong, The Logic of Slavery,
Introduction.
Week 2. 9/13
& 15:
Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Introduction,” to Slave Narratives. Specific
Selections from the Slave Narratives of Equiano, Prince, Jacobs and
Douglass.* Poems by Wheatley.
Selections from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (there is no internal pagination in this file,
and so only PD-reader page numbers are here): 15-17, 20-22, 24-36, 82-91;
selections from The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (the
following page numbers, for the Prince narrative, are being shown first as
internal page numbering and then your PDF reader’s numbering—e.g., “1/5”
means page 1 in the file’s numbering of pages, and page 5 according to the
PDF reader’s automatic numbering): 1/5-12/9, 18/17-24/23; selections
from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (the
following pages are indicated by designated chapters): Chap’s 1-3, Chap. 10
up to “I held my Sabbath… (page 48), Chap. 11 up to “Upon receiving . . .”
(page 61), Chap. 11 starting with
“In about four months after I went to New Bedford” and going to the end;
selections from Linda Brent's (Harriet Jacobs’) Incidents in the life of a
Slave Girl (the following pagination is being designated by chapter
numbers): Chapters 1, 7, 10, 14, 21, 40, and 41 to the end (up to Appendix).
Week 3. 9/20
& 22:
The
Declaration of Independence
Available at:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/declare.asp
The
Constitution of the United States,
See, especially:
Article I,
Section 2, clause 3 [3/5ths Compromise];
Article I,
Section 9, clause 1 [International Slave Trade]
Article IV,
Section 2, clause 3 [Fugitive Slave Clause], and
Article IV,
Section 2, clause 1 [the privileges and immunities clause]
Available at:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/usconst.asp.
The Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850; Available at:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp
Prigg v. Pennsylvania
(1842).
Sept 27th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Law, and Slavery
9/29:
Week 5. 10/4
& 6:
PBS Documentary:
Slavery by Another Name.
The Civil Rights Amendments;
The Constitution of the United
States, Amendments XIII (13), XVI (14), and XV (15)
Available at:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/usconst.asp.
The Civil
Rights Cases (1883).
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).
Week 6.
10/11 & 13:
Carol Horton,
Race and the
Making of American Liberalism (Oxford,
2005),
Introduction and Chapter 1 (“Anti-Caste
Liberalism”).
Recommended:
PBS Documentary, “Slavery by Another Name”; available at:
http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/
Week 7.
10/18:
Thernstroms (Abigail and Stephen): “Black Progress: How far we’ve come, how
far we have to go,”
Brookings Brief,
1998.
Eddie Glaude, Jr.
Democracy In
Black (Crown, 2015), Intro, and Chapter 1.
October 18th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Dred Scott, Civil War Amendments, Civil Rights Cases,
Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Rise of Jim Crow
10/20:
DuBois,
The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Forethought,
Chapter I (Of Our Spiritual Strivings), Chapter II (Of the Dawn of Freedom),
Chapter III (Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others)., Chapter IV (Of the
Meaning of Progress), and Chapter VI (Of the Black Belt).
Week 8.
10/25:
DuBois,
The Souls of
Black Folk (1903), Chapter IV (Of the
Meaning of Progress), and Chapter VI (Of the Black Belt).
October 25th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
DuBois,
Souls of Black Folk
10/27:
Wilkerson,
The Warmth of Other Suns,
Introduction/Excerpts
Week 9. 11/1:
Wilson, The Piano Lesson
November 1st,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Wilson’s
The Piano Lesson (1990)
11/3:
Film: The Piano Lesson
Week 10.
11/8 & 10:
Wright,
Native Son, Book 1.
November 8th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Richard Wright,
Native Son
Week 11.
11/15 & 17:
Native Son,
Books 2&3 (Book
3 only these pages: 273-310 ending with "He lay on the cold floor"), 418-30
(ending with "How Bigger Was Born").
Optional: “How Bigger Was Born.”
November 15th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Richard Wright,
Native Son
Week 12.
11/22
(Thurs. sched.):
Sugrue,
Sweet Land of Liberty,
Chapter 3.
Naomi Murakawa,
The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison
America (Oxford Univ. Press, 2014), Chapters
1 and 2.
Brown v. Board of Education
(1954).
November 22nd,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Racial Liberalism in the 1940’s and 50’s
Week 13.
11/29:
Baldwin, “Nobody Knows My Name” (1960-61).
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, excerpts.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
(1977), excerpts.
Film:
Eyes on the Prize,
The Boston Busing Controversy, 1974-75;
available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psPEOo78CGk
(Total
Running Time 57:00; Boston Segment Time: 0:00 to 31:12).
November 29th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Anti-Discrimination and the Affirmative Action
Controversy
12/1:
Individual oral/visual reports on research project.
Week 14.
12/6:
Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” (1960-61).
Claudia Rankine,
Citizen:
An
American Lyric (2014). Reading in class by
Patricia Smith.
December 6th,
Joint Class Discussion with CSI:
Contemporary Literary Responses to an American
Racial Divide
12/8:
Individual oral/visual reports on research project.
Week 15.
12/13:
Individual oral/visual reports on research project. (Last class.)