Pedagogy Apr 2018

“Ranaway from the Subscriber”

Heidi Elisabeth Bollinger

Abstract

Students entering an introductory survey course on African American literature have uneven background knowledge on the history of slavery in the United States. Given this, one of the key challenges in teaching the slave narrative is helping students appreciate the rhetorical intervention that these narratives made in antebellum debates about the slaves’ humanity. To highlight the urgency of these humanizing claims, it is necessary for students to understand how slaveholders viewed their property. This article describes how I use eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wanted advertisements for runaway slaves to frame classroom discussions about the slave narrative. This lesson enhances skills of careful observation, critical questioning, writing to discover, and comparative analysis as it deepens students’ knowledge of African American literature.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2018-04-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-4359261
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
rhetorical criticism teacher development race and writing literary studies
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References (10)

  1. Andrews (1986)
    To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865
  2. Bruce (2007)
    Politics and Political Philosophy in the Slave Narrative
     ↗
  3. Douglass ([1845] 1995)
    Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  4. Ernest (1999)
    Qualified Knowledge: Douglass and Harriet Jacobs
  5. Franklin (1999)
    Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation
Show all 10 →
  1. Hall (1999)
    Related Readings
  2. Jacobs ([1861] 2001)
    Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
  3. Jefferson (1999)
    Notes on the State of Virginia
  4. Klammer (1999)
    Teaching Douglass’s Narrative in an Introductory Humanities Course
  5. Mills (1999)
    Teaching Douglass’s Narrative in the United States Literature Survey
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