 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0621-8026-01 | Release Slaves in America | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
The collapse of Southern slavery is often considered a watershed event in the history of the United States. This seminar will examine this notion and explore its myriad complexities through the rich historical literature from the first critical treatments of the 1960s to the digital humanities projects of our own day. We will analyze emancipation both as a moment and an era, an event in the history of the South and a national drama, a distinctly American phenomenon and a chapter in a broader transnational story. We will ask how emancipation redefined race, gender, class, and citizenship in America, and how it was experienced both individually and collectively. The course is aimed specifically at graduate students specializing in U.S. history. Students from other subfields may enroll only after receiving written permission.