This course will primarily be concerned with examining in some detail the recent proliferation of African American fiction about slavery.  After a preliminary discussion of some notable antebellum slave narratives, we will study eight contemporary “narratives of slavery” and define the three most notable forms of representing slavery in contemporary fiction: 1) “Neo-Slave narratives” -- that is, novels that are contemporary rewritings of antebellum slave narrative forms and conventions; 2) “Palimpsest narratives,” which are novels set in late twentieth-century America but tracing modern social relations within an explicit representation of the slave experience; and 3) historical novels set in the antebellum South.

Bradley, David.  The Chaneysville Incident.  Harper & Row, 1990.
Butler, Octavia.  Kindred.  Beacon, 1988.
Douglass, Frederick.  Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, ed. Houston A. Baker.  Penguin, 1986.
Johnson, Charles.  Middle Passage.  NAL, 1991.
-----------------.  Oxherding Tale.  NAL, 1991.
Jones, Gayl.  Corregidora.  Beacon, 1986.
Morrison, Toni.  Beloved.  New American Library, 1989.
Reed, Ishmael.  Flight to Canada.  Atheneum, 1989.
Williams, Sherley Anne.  Dessa Rose.  Berkley, 1987. 

** N.B. There will also be a packet of xeroxed material at PIP Printing, 179 Main St. (344-9001)

Your final grade will be based on several factors: a consideration of the overall achievement and degree of improvement over the course of the marked essays, attendance, and participation. 

I will mark and grade your papers, using the standard A-F grading mode

You will be required to write three papers for this course: two short essays; and one long essay. 

Paper # 1 - 4 typed, double-spaced pages (max. 1000 words)
                        -due March 5 @ 6:00 p.m. in class

Paper # 2 - 4 typed, double-spaced pages (max. 1000 words)
                        -due April 9 @ 6:00 p.m. in class

Paper # 3 - 8 typed, double-spaced pages (max. 2000 words)
                        -due April 30@ 6:00 p.m. in class

Frederick Douglass, Narrative
* James Olney, "‘I Was Born’: Slave Narratives, Their
Status as Autobiography and as Literature"
* Arna Bontemps, "The Slave Narrative: An American Genre"
* Charles T. Davis, "The Slave Narrative: First Major Art
Form in an Emerging Black Tradition"

* Handout on the Sociopolitical Contexts of Contemporary Narratives of Slavery
* "Neo-Slave Narratives"
* Rushdy, "Reading Black, White, and Gray in 1968: The Origins of the Contemporary Narrativity of Slavery"

Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada
* Robin Winks, "The Making of a Fugitive Slave
Narrative: Josiah Henson and Uncle Tom -- A Case Study"

Shirley Anne Williams, Dessa Rose
* Hazel Carby, "Ideologies of Black Folk"

Gayl Jones, Corregidora
* Handout on the “Blues”