Vorlesung Narrating Slavery in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

This lecture course deals with the issue of slavery – past and present – across different literary genres and media, and in diverse cultures and historical contexts. Beginning with the emergence of the so-called triangular trade, which resulted in the forced removal of Africans to the Americas by Europeans in the early modern age, and the institution of slavery, the lecture course traces discourse on slavery in Anglophone literature, from Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko or The Royal Slave (1688), one of the earliest novels in English literature, slave narratives by Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and the emergence of the Abolitionist movement in the United States and Britain, to postcolonial literature revising and rewriting slavery, including Caryl Phillips’s novel Cambridge (1991) and David Dabydeen’s poem Turner (1993). The lecture will also be concerned with visual representations of slavery and the slave trade (from Romantic painter William Turner to harem scenes by French Orientalist artists), with trajectories between abolitionism and the women’s movement and last but not least, with recent movies such as Amazing Grace (2006), Django Unchained (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013; based on Solomon Northup’s eponymous memoir of 1853). Texts: An extensive course reader containing excerpts from literature discussed in the lecture course as well as a bibliography with suggestions for further reading will be made available at the beginning of the semester. Anglistik Universität Duisburg-Essen WiSe 2015/16 Professorin Plummer Patricia