Here is where you will find anything listed as an extra reading or a link for a particular class.
September 14: sources for modern North American slavery.
As our sources on slave experiences in Greece and Rome are often very poor, we will frequently look at comparative material to better understand what slavery was like for those who were enslaved. (We are pretty clear on what their masters felt about slavery. Getting that information is not an issue.)
Library of Congress: visual sources for US slavery
This is a letter from an ex-slave to his master. It’s the very sort of material we are lacking from antiquity. It’s also very funny, and it won’t be often you get to say that in this course…
If you’re still interested, this is the Library of Congress page for Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. Which “contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).”
Wednesday, October 21: Theatre and entertainment
Friday, November 6: Families and relationships
Please also read the selections noted in the following links. These are autobiographies of escaped slaves from the American south, and show the slave’s perspective and experience in slave families.
Chapters 1-3 of Frederick Douglass’ Life
Page 11-12 and 82-96 of Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
(You can keep reading, but you get the depressing gist of what family life was like for slaves in these selections.)
Greece and Hellenistic freedmen and women
Monday, November 23: Chapters 5-10 of Petronius’ Satyricon (the link goes to chapter 5; click at the bottom to go forward to chapter 6. This is an extract from a Roman novel: in this section our anti-heroes end up at the dinner party of a very rich freedman.)
Follow