SLAVERY IN AMERICAN CULTURE AND THOUGHT
American Studies 150W
(last taught Spring 2004)
Robert Nelson
Office hours: Mondays 2:00pm-4:00pm or by appointment
Office: Blair 354
Phone: 221-1136
E-mail: rknels@wm.edu
Course Description
This is not a course on the history of American slavery. Instead, we'll be studying how slavery as a concept and as an institution affected nineteenth-century culture and thought in the United States. Slavery is something that we understandably tend to associate with the pre-Civil War South. Yet its cultural, social, and political impact was by no means isolated to that region or that time period. The presence of the institution to the south had an indelible influence upon the politics of the pre-Civil War North, and memory of the institution continued to affect American culture long after emancipation. In this course we will study how the always changing and often contested concept of "slavery" impacted the cultural and political history of the United States during the course of the nineteenth century.
While learning about nineteenth-century American history is a central aim of this course, the main objective is to help you to further develop a number of skills necessary for success as a college student: the ability to read scholarship with a critical yet appreciative eye, the capacity to clearly articulate complex ideas in writing and in speech, and the power to produce original, intelligent arguments of your own.
Assignments
Notes
On one of the two classes (Tuesday or Thursday) for each of the nine weeks we're reading secondary literature, I will ask you to submit to me and bring to class your notes on the readings. I would like at least one paragraph for each chapter or essay assigned that class. These notes should not be an outline of the reading. Instead after finishing an essay or a chapter, please write a clear paragraph--using complete sentences--that summarizes its argument. These notes should be as concise as possible while (1) clearly expressing what you take to be the main argument and (2) noting all the issues or topics addressed in the essay or chapter that you consider of import. While you're welcome to briefly critique the argument after summarizing it, that is not necessary.
The class will be split into two groups: As and Bs. The days where As and Bs are responsible for these notes are indicated on the class breakdown below. You'll need to submit your notes to me two hours before the start of class (i.e. 10:30am) using the digital drop box on the course's blackboard site. You'll also need to bring them to class. While we may not do this every class, I will often ask you to read your notes to the class to initiate our discussion. I will not be giving these notes letter grades; instead I wi ll indicate whether they are adequate ("+") or inadequate ("-"). In the case that they are marked as inadequate, you will have the opportunity to redo them to earn an adequate mark.
Response Papers
You will write four 1250- to 1500-word papers for this course. In each of these papers I want you to thoughtfully analyze the readings from that unit. In contrast to your notes, you should not summarize the readings in these papers. Instead, you should aim to produce a thoughtful, original argument rather than reproduce the arguments of others. These response papers are meant to give you an opportunity to do in miniature what professional historians do: explicating the culture and politics of the past by analyzing primary sources and engaging the ideas of others from secondary sources. In your paper you might draw upon the secondary literature to make an argument that thoughtfully analyzes the cultural politics of the primary sources, or you might draw upon the primary sources to complicate or critique the argument of the historical studies.
For the first three of these four response papers I will be happy to accept revised versions. You must arrange to meet with me outside of class to talk about the paper before you can submit a revised version. Any revisions will have to be submitted before the next response paper is due. Your final grade for that response paper will be the average of the original paper's grade and the revised version's grade.
While I will accept hard copies of your papers, I would prefer to receive them electronically, submitted in either .rtf or Microsoft Word format to the digital drop box on the course's Blackboard site. Late papers will result in worse grades; I will subtract a letter grade for each day the paper is late (e.g. a "B+" paper that is two days late will result in a "D+").
Final Paper
Instead of a final or a long term paper, your final assignment will be another 1250- to 1500-word paper. In this paper I'd like you to make a thoughtful argument about at least one primary source we did not read in class that is related to slavery and nineteenth-century American culture and thought. This primary source might be an abolitionist poem, a proslavery article from a nineteenth-century newspaper, antislavery broadsides, or advertisements for runaway, fugitive slaves. While you're encouraged to draw upon the course readings, you also need to use at least two secondary sources that were not assigned. (These secondary sources need not be long, book-length studies. Two scholarly essays would be sufficient.) You might think of this as a response paper to primary and secondary source readings you pick yourself. Again, your aim should be to make a thoughtful, coherent argument.
In addition to materials--books, microfilm, microfiche--available at Swem, there are three capacious archives on the web where you might locate your primary source: the tWO "Making of America" sites (http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moagrp/" and http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/) have digitized images of thousands of books and journal articles from the nineteenth century, and the "Wright American Fiction" archive (http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/web/w/wright2/) has digitized images of nearly all of the approximately 3000 novels published in American from 1851 to 1875. On April 22, you will need to bring a preliminary draft of your introductory paragraph to class for peer review. Your essay is due the day of the scheduled final exam listed in the registration bulletin. Again, late papers will compromise your grade; I will subtract a letter grade for each day the paper is late.
Grading
Your four response papers will amount to 40% of your grade (10% each); your collective notes and your final paper will each count for 15% of your grade. The remaining 30% will be based upon your active participation in class discussions. Failure to attend class will, of course, compromise your class participation grade.
Any cases of plagiarism will result in an "F" and will be reported to the Honor Council. William & Mary's Honor Code describes that "Plagiarism occurs when a student, with intent to deceive or with reckless disregard for proper scholarly procedures, presents any information, ideas or phrasing of another as if they were his or her own and does not give appropriate credit to the original source. Proper scholarly procedures require that all quoted material be identified by quotation marks or indentation on the page, and the source of information and ideas, if from another, must be identified and be attributed to that source. Students are responsible for learning proper scholarly procedure" (http://www.wm.edu/SO/honor-council/honorcode.htm). In cases where plagiarism is suspected, I reserve the right to use to submit students' work to turnitin.com. If you have any questions about proper citation, intellectual integrity, or this policy, please feel free to ask me.