Would you understand the #MeToo era better if you had read Harriet Jacobs's 1861 autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl? What are we laughing at when Saturday Night Live's Leslie Jones jokes that she would be the most useful woman in antebellum America? This interdisciplinary course explores how resistance strategies of Black women from and after the time of slavery can be applied to our current moment. It takes popular tropes from our contemporary language and connects them to marginalized texts from centuries ago to critically examine discourses of identity power racism and law. Students leave this course with a more informed understanding of American slavery as it relates to our current world.
