All readings are posted in the tab “Readings” in this blog. I will distribute to the class the password of this tab via email before the beginning of the course.
Mostly, we will use extracts from these books: David Brion Davis, Inhuman bondage: the Rise and Fall of slavery in the New World (2006), David Eltis, The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (2000), John Thornton, Africa and Africans in Making of Atlantic World (1998), and Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship (2008).
SCHEDULE
Week 1. Slavery and the Slave Ship
April 2, Monday: Introduction to the course
April 4, Wednesday: What was slavery? Read: Davis, 27-47.
April 6, Friday: “Life, Death, and Terror in the Slave Trade” Read: Rediker, Intro, Ch. 1.
Week 2. Labour transitions: From Indigenous and European, to African
April 9, Monday: The Spanish and Portuguese in the era of Conquest: Read: Thornton, 13-42
April 11, Wednesday: The English Atlantic and changing conceptions of Labor. Read: The Origins of Slavery in the Americas (PDF)
April 13, Friday: “The evolution of the Slave Ship”. Read: Rediker, The Slave Ship, Ch. 2.
Week 3. Slavery in Africa
April 16, Monday: Kinship and chattel slavery. Read: Thornton, 72-97.
April 18, Wed: Centralized and decentralized African societies. Read: Thornton, 98-125
April 20, Friday: “African Paths to the Middle Passage” Read: Rediker, Ch. 3. and SUBMIT Assignment 1.
Week 4. African Voices and The Impact of the Slave Trade
April 23, Monday: African voices on the transatlantic slave trade. Read: Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia and Trevor R. Getz. African Histories: New Sources and New Techniques for Studying African Pasts. Boston: Prentice Hall, 2012, pp. 81-110 (PDF).
April 25, Wednesday: “Olaudah Equiano: Astonishment and Terror” Rediker, Ch. 4.
April 27, Friday: Debates on the impact of the slave trade in Africa: Read: Excerpts from Rodney, Manning and Eltis in: Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 133-173
Week 5. Race, Gender, and Class
April 30, Monday: Race and Class intersecting Slavery. Read: Timothy Lockley “Race and Slavery” and Jonathan Daniel Wells, “Class and Slavery”.
May 2, Wednesday:ender. Read: Eltis, 85-113 and Kristin E. Wood “Gender and Slavery”
May 4, Friday: MIDTERM
Week 6 Culture and Ethnicity
May 7, Monday: “From Captives to Shipmates”. Read: Rediker, Ch. 9.
May 9, Wed: Assimilation, Creolization, Transculturation, and Afro-Centrism. Read: Thornton, 183-234
May 11, Friday, What did shield slaves against slavery? Read: Kevin Dawson, “Slave Culture”
Week 7. Resistance
May 14, Monday: Resistance and rebellions in slave ships Read: Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion, 64-95.
May 16, W: Frontier runaways, Palenques, and Quilombos in Latin America. Read: Thornton, 272-303
May 18, Friday: Haiti and 19th Century Slave Rebellions, Read: Davis, 157-174 and 205-230. SUBMIT Assignment 2.
Week 8. The ending of the slave trade but the expansion of slavery
May 21, Monday: British Abolition of the traffic and the British Caribbean. Read: Eltis, 258-84 and Davis, 231-49
May 23, Wed.: “The Long Voyage of the Slave Ship Brooks” and “Endless Passage” Read: Rediker, Ch. 10 and Epilogue
May 25, F: Second Slavery in the United States Read: Michael Tadman “Internal Slave Trades in the Americas”
Week 9. Abolition I: USA
May 28, Monday: Memorial Day, no class
May 30, Wednesday: Abolition in the United States. Read: Davis, 250-267
June 1, Friday: No class
Week 10. Abolition II: Latin America
June 4, Monday: Abolition in in Brazil. Read: Smicht-Nowara Abolition in Cuba and Brazil (PDF). SUBMIT Assignment 3.
June 6, W: Invited guest speaker, Briana Simmons, “Nineteenth-Century Photography of Brazilian Coffee Plantations.” Art History, Santa Monica College.
June 8, Friday: Abolition in Cuba.
Week 11: FINAL EXAM