New England Bound: Slavery and Emancipation in the North
AFAM 277
Spring 2018
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01
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This course examines struggles over Black slavery, freedom, and community formation in New England, with a primary focus on Middletown and Connecticut. We will explore the lived experiences and freedom struggles of Black individuals and communities, from revolutionary Black sailors to Middletown's first free Black abolitionists. The course, which satisfies the Early AFAM History requirement for the major, will particularly invite students to grapple with Wesleyan's and Middletown's complex relationships to slavery and emancipation. As we will learn, slavery and the slave trade played central roles in New England's culture and economy, especially here in Middletown. Like in other New England ports, Middletown merchants made a fortune from the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the plantation economy that supported it, even selling enslaved Africans on Middletown's Main Street. And southern slaveholders were among the first Wesleyan students in the 1830s. At the same time, free African Americans and their allies made Middletown a stop on the Underground Railroad and a center of the antislavery movement, laying the groundwork for Connecticut's eventual abolition of slavery and for high-profile court cases like the Amistad trial. Combatting popular images of the "free North," this course will show slavery's central role in Middletown's local and state history, while also exploring how the Connecticut River tied Connecticut to regional and even global currents of slavery and antislavery. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS AFAM |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (AFAM) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: 75% - 89% |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Wendy Warren, NEW ENGLAND BOUND: SLAVERY AND COLONIZATION IN EARLY AMERICA
Anne Farrow, COMPLICITY: HOW THE NORTH PROMOTED, PROLONGED, AND PROFITED FROM SLAVERY
Catherine Adams and Elizabeth H. Pleck, LOVE OF FREEDOM: BLACK WOMEN IN COLONIAL AND REVOLUTIONARY NEW ENGLAND
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| Instructor(s): Nasta,Jesse Times: .M.W... 10:50AM-12:10PM; Location: CAAS LOUNG; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 4 | JR major: 4 | | |
| Seats Available: 3 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 4 | SO: 3 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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