This week we’ll think about the repercussions of anti-slavery and the politics of race in a revolutionary era.

Please read the following for our discussion on Tuesday:

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995)  Chapter 3, “An Unthinkable History” or another chapter from this book if you’ve already read Chapter 3.

Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Anti-Slavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic” American Historical Review, February 2012: 40-66.

Michael West and William Martin, “Haiti I’m Sorry: The Haitian Revolution and the Forging of the Black International”in West, Martin and Wilkins, eds. From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2009).

As I suggested in class, please use the following strategy: read Trouillot carefully and thoroughly; and then choose one of the other articles to know well–be familiar with the argument, the evidence, and formulate a critique or a response of some kind; then, with the other article (either Ferrer or West/Martin), skim it, get a sense of the argument and some of the evidence, but don’t worry too much about the finer points.

Here is a very helpful text that will get you through not just this course but any other university course with an upper-level reading load: How to Read

If you are doing a blog post this week, post it here.

See you Tuesday, and remember, Thursday we won’t meet formally but you should be working on your group projects. Visit this page for details and guidelines.

And finally, my office hours for the next few weeks are as follows:

Friday January 20: Cancelled

Tuesday January 24: 11-2 and 3:30-4

Friday January 27: Cancelled

Tuesday January 31: 11-2, and Friday Feb. 3, 12-3.

I will be available on email throughout.

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