01 TTH6 CAC 10557 SLOAN MU-213
This course explores the 19th-century United States through the lens of the literature, lives, and legacies of four women named Harriet: Harriet Wilson, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Tubman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In this course we will examine their varied relationships to and representations of slavery, abolition, freedom, and resistance. In addition to these prominent themes, we will also consider how things such as geography (North vs. South, urban vs. rural), genre (sentimental novel, slave narrative/autobiography), religious discourse, and human-animal relationships played a significant role in the lives and works of these women. This course will also address questions related to the reception history of their major literary works. Why was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin the most popular novel of the 19th century while Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig received relatively little attention until the latter half of the 20th century?
In addition to these major works we will read various accounts of Harriet Tubman’s life as well as letters to/from and relevant to the lives of Jacobs, Wilson, and Beecher Stowe. We will also read works by Maria Stewart, David Walker, Thomas R. Gray, Frederick Douglass, George Moses Horton, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Martin R. Delany, John Brown, Lydia Maria Child, Frances E.W. Harper, W.E.B. Du Bois and others. Course requirements include class attendance, active class participation, reflective discussion posts, 1-2 page reading responses, an 8-10 page paper, and a final project that creatively engages with the themes of the course.