More than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery—its histories and legacies—remains the subject of heated debate among the institution’s descendants and the millions of others who live in its wake.  As a global institution predicated upon the exchange of human bodies, slavery helped to forge political and economic empires, divided nations, and crystallized racialized caste hierarchies that persist into the present. Yet, the politically and emotionally charged nature of conversations about slavery has obscured the lives of the women, men, and children who bore the legal status of “slave.”  This course explores the meanings of enslavement from the perspectives of those who experienced it, and in doing so, interrogates broader questions of the relationship between slavery and the construction of racialized group identities.  Using autobiographical narratives, eyewitness accounts, slaveholder diaries, images, and archeological evidence from the United States, we examine the religious, philosophical, and experiential orientations that grounded the enslaved psyche and found expression in bondpeople’s music, movement, foodways, dress, and institutions.  0

Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh
Author

Vanderbilt University
Institution

Private College or University
Institution Type

Syllabus
Resource Type

Undergraduate Course, Graduate Course, Online
Class Type

2020
Date Published

Religious Studies
Discipline

Religous Tradition

Topics