230190 Narrating the Middle Passage (S) (SoSe 2021)

From the 16th to the early 19th century, an estimated 12-15 million African slaves were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas; about 15%-20% of the Africans died at sea. The horrors of what became known as the ‘Middle Passage’ of the triangular trade have captured the popular imagination. In this seminar, we will analyse various cultural documents that narrate the slave trade experience and will locate them in their historical, political and social contexts. We will begin with the autobiographical slave narrative and travelogue The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African, Written by Himself (1789) and William Cowper’s poem “The Negro’s Complaint” (1788/1789), before turning to visual culture: The Slave Ship, originally titled Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying – Typhoon coming on (1840) by the British artist J.M.W. Turner, Josiah Wedgwood’s medallion “Am I Not a Man and a Brother” and the engraving “The Slave Ship ‘Brookes’” published and circulated by the abolitionist movement. To conclude the seminar, we will explore seascape depictions in Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History” (1979) and Fred D’Aguiar’s novel Feeding the Ghosts (1997).

Bibliography

Please purchase the following novel – further material will be made available:
Fred D’Aguiar, Feeding the Ghosts (1997)