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CS92PROD
Circulating Bodies: Commodities, Prostitutes, and Slaves in 18th-Century England
ENGL 314
Fall 2012 not offered

In the newly booming consumer culture of 18th-century England, people were constantly buying and selling things--bespoke suits and manufactured trinkets as well as prostitutes and slaves. This course will explore the period's circulating bodies as they were passed from hand to hand, valued and revalued, used, abused, and discarded. We will trace processes of circulation in 18th-century novels and poetry and listen as the "things" themselves tell stories: in the period, commodities, prostitutes, and slaves all wrote memoirs (or had ones imagined for them). We will read these texts alongside contemporary debates about economics, abolition, and women's rights, and we will return again and again to fundamental questions about personal identity, individual agency and passivity, commodification, objectification, and the very limits of the human.
Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA ENGL
Course Format: Lecture / DiscussionGrading Mode: Graded
Level: UGRD Prerequisites: None
Fulfills a Major Requirement for: (ENGL)

Last Updated on MAR-29-2024
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