Monday assignments

Just to remind everyone, you are blogging as usual on Monday's reading (the WPA slave narratives) in addition to finishing the prospectus to turn in on Monday. A few people had asked about this.

The Confessions of Nat Turner for 10/4

Some of you have mentioned difficulty finding the page numbers that you need for the novel _The Confessions of Nat Turner_. I checked with the Reserve desk and realized that they don't make my reserve form avaliable to students (this had the page numbers). So here's what you need to read/copy:

Author's Note; "To the Public"; Pt I 1-41 (end at sentence beginning with Justice...");
PtIII 387(start at "The sharp piney odor...")-415.

Please don't hesitate to let me know if there's further confusion. Don't forget to get the assigned essay "You've Taken My Nat and Gone" as well.

Success Stories

I’ve read your first blog posts and I have to say, they look pretty good. As a group, I found them to be fairly strong on the whole. To give you a sense of what I think worked especially well (and to alert you to techniques and approaches that you might wish to try in your own blogging), I give you these “success stories”:

* Andrea’s post is detailed and thoughtful. More importantly, she brings up a question that she felt the text to be raising (but not resolving). She zeros in on that line on p. 373, asking what Douglass really means when he talks about the brutalizing effects of slavery on slave masters. By doing this, she gives us a lot to think about—it’s a good question.

* Danielle’s post is excellent because it demonstrates real engagement with the text and real reflection at a personal level. You can see that she put considerable thought and energy into this post.

* Laurie took a different tack with the post by comparing Douglass and Equiano. She sketches broad connections between the two, and then offers specific passages from the Douglass text to illustrate her ideas in depth. This is a good because it shows specific attention to detail but also wider thinking across texts.

* In general, the posts that were most successful used passages from the text vs. speaking more generally. Some other students’ posts that stood out: Jenn, Ashlee, Liza, Merissa, and Vanessa.


So this gives you something else to think about as you read through and offer comment on this week’s blog posts. I am also happy to offer individual feedback as well—just ask. Weekly blog grades will be posted in your blackboard gradebook after the comments are completed.

Project Assignments

Here is the schedule for the presentations; I have assigned you a broad topic and a partner based on your preferences (when possible). Your next step is to meet with your partner and discuss a specific topic for your project. For instance, if you were assigned film, you need to choose a film that depicts slavery; some examples might be Beloved or Gone with the Wind.

The next deadline coming up is 10/2, when you must turn in your prospectus.

Mon., 11/27: Courtney Longton & Eric Bell: film
Danielle Scott, Rebecca Sarnecki, & Amanda Richards: television

Weds., 11/29: Laurie Byrnes & Ashlee Kronau: documentary film
Ariel Davis & Wendy Ulloa: African American actor depicting slave

Mon. 12/4: Mary Lewis & Vanessa Mann: poetry
Merissa Saburro & Shannon McAllister: children’s lit in elementary curriculum

Weds. 12/6: Jennifer Carey & Carey Foley: children’s lit
Andrea Griffin & Jessica Gist: visual arts

Mon. 12/11: Liza Sowle & Lacy Bartkey: young adult lit
Dianna Bolton & Scott Szeli: music

Reserve Reading

Just a reminder: don't forget to go to the library to get the short reading which is on reserve for Monday. We will be reading Fitzhugh's "Sociology of the South" in addition to the first 9 chapters of Douglass. The article should be under Eng 216, and the ref. number is P931.

Have a nice weekend.

My own responses

I thought we had a great discussion on that first day of class; I appreciated everyone's insight and candor. Here are my responses to the questions I asked (edited for brevity of course, since I could talk about this all day...)

1) What do I "know" about slavery? Although I've certainly accumulated my share of "facts" over the years (and there are still lots of facts that I have yet to learn), I tend to think of slavery in more emotional and moral terms, as a dark spot on our national conscience that we have yet to erase or resolve. I know that slavery destroyed lives, broke up families, and was a massive injustice. I also know that while we tend to want to "contain" slavery by assigning it to the past and to other places (like the South), slavery was both a national and an international phenomenon (as our readings will demonstrate) and as we discussed in class, can be thought of as an ongoing phenomenon if we look closely at labor conditions and military conflicts around the globe.

2) Where did I "learn" what I "know" about slavery? I suppose I learned my share of info in school, but it was always very "dry" material and, despite (or perhaps because of?) my having grown up in the post-Civil Rights Era of the south, there seemed to be a reticence about slavery: we were presented with basic info and dates of the Civil War, agricultural details about crops grown by slaves, little tidbits about slave culture like spirituals, but nothing was really "alive." In college and graduate school I certainly found more satisfying sources of information, like Elizabeth Fox Genovese's book _Within the Plantation Household_. And I would say I learned the most by reading literature like the books we'll read in this class.

3)Why should we revisit this period of our collective past? (or why not?) Even though legal slavery came to end over 140 years ago, I think the legacy of the past is still with us (racism, poverty, inequalities of opportunity and white privilege). I think this material can make us more attuned to the realities of our present. And I think we would lose so much by not engaging with this history and this literature, which can teach us so much about human cruelty but also human goodness and endurance. Like many of you, I feel an obligation to share this material by teaching it to others--it has so much to tell us about both African American and AMERICAN culture.

Thanks for sharing your answers. I'm looking forward to a great semester.