ENGL 2381 - Enslavement and Abolition in British Literature 1688-1831

Prerequisite: WRIT 1000
FDR: Literature Distribution (HL)
Credits: 3

This course considers representations of and responses to enslavement and the slave trade in British literature from 1688 to 1831. We read a wide variety of texts, including Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, The Woman of Color (anonymous), Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, and Mary Prince’s The History of Mary Prince, alongside Parliamentary debates, abolitionist tracts, and other contemporary accounts. Other topics may include emerging racial theories in the eighteenth century, British colonialism in the Caribbean, twenty-first-century approaches to the archive, and the legacy of these conversations in more recent literature, such as Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing.