Unit information: American Slavery: Black Bodies, Voices and Exploitation in the United States (Level C Special Topic) in 2017/18

Unit name	American Slavery: Black Bodies, Voices and Exploitation in the United States (Level C Special Topic)
Unit code	HIST10039
Credit points	20
Level of study	C/4
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Livesey
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	Department of History (Historical Studies)
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

While U.S. slavery was implicitly a form of labour exploitation, underlying the institution were a set of beliefs held by white Americans about the servility and exploitability of the black body. Whether the beliefs were linked to racialised thought, religious belief -- or even rooted in pseudo-science -- white Americans, primarily in the southern states, found a spectrum of ways to put these ideas into practice through the exploitation of enslaved bodies. This interdisciplinary module will explore slavery through the lens of black bodily exploitation, including case studies of sexual violence against enslaved people, various forms of enslaved labour, ideas about reproduction, female labour and wet nursing, violence and the black body, the black body and capitalism, and the most recent literature on enslaved people and medical experimentation. Through engagement with these topics, as well as more generalised literature on the slave experience, students will evaluate the relationships of important concepts such as ‘race’, ‘consent’, ‘freedom’, and ‘gender’ to American slavery; but also consider the ways in which enslaved people resisted white racialised notions of their body and personhood.

Unit aims

• To explore slavery in the United States from a social, cultural and economic perspective.
• To introduce students to a broad variety of critical debates and concepts used in the historiography of slavery, including critical race theory and body studies.
• To encourage reflection on issues concerning racism and discrimination (including how ‘race’ has been constructed, reconstructed, and experienced in the United States) by engaging in informed discussion, as well as by reading contemporary critical race theory and tapping into a range of lively historiographical debates.
• To develop students’ skills in the critical evaluation and historical interpretation of a broad range of primary and secondary sources.
• To develop students’ ability to plan and present clear and critically informed oral and written arguments to a standard appropriate to first-year degree work.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit students will be able to:

1) Demonstrate an understanding of ideas of slavery and race developed in the nineteenth-century United States.

2) Apply ideas in conceptual material on ‘consent’, ‘race’, and ‘gender’ to American slavery.

3) Critically analyse a range of primary sources, developing original arguments relating to their historical context and relevant debates.

4) Apply knowledge to an appropriate topic independently, presenting a convincing written argument in a cogent and scholarly manner, appropriate to level C.

Teaching Information

One 1-hour lecture and one 1-hour seminar weekly

Assessment Information

1 x 2 hour exam (100%) [ILOs 1-4]

Reading and References

• Margo DeMello, Body Studies: An Introduction
• Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams
• Todd Savitt, Medicine and Slavery: The Diseases and Health Care of Blacks in Antebellum Virginia
• Oxford Handbook of the African American Slave Narrative
• Blassingame, John, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South
• Tadman, Michael, Speculators and Slaves: Masters, Traders and Slaves in the Old South