Slavery and Abolition in Contemporary Culture

The politics of the representation of slavery and abolition are visible everywhere right now in contemporary culture - from monument removals, to school curricula bans, to art that provokes us to "imagine successful slave revolts" (Dread Scott, 2019). In this course, students engage with how the history of slavery and abolition is remembered and invoked in the present in museums, news, social movements, rhetoric, policy, and public space. By situating our inquiry in the racial foundations of colonial modernity, and foregrounding structural continuities and discontinuities, we will analyze the political work various representations accomplish.