This is one of several upper-level courses that fulfill the American literature requirement for junior and senior English majors and secondary certification students in English. Usually a few M.A. English or M.Ed. Total enrollment is about 35. This is a 3-hour class that meets twice a week for a semester. The format is mostly discussion.
Graduate students do a longer research paper and lead discussion for half a class period.
We compare and contrast the perspectives of these writers by region, gender, class, culture, and whether they are newcomers or established in their regions. Because of race and gender, Douglass, Stowe, and Jacobs provide comparisons and especially contrasts in material covered, style, narrative technique, sense of audience, and literary traditions within which they write. In your essay explain whether the differences you discuss strengthen or weaken the works. You are encouraged to use other anti-slavery works on the reading list as reference points or perspectives for your contrast. In what turns out to be an essay question on the mid-term students are asked in class to think about which rendering of the slave experience and which strategy for dealing with slavery would be most persuasive to them if they had lived in the years before the Civil War.