Approaches to Teaching Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- Editor: Lynn Domina
- Pages: 218
- Published: 2024
- ISBN: 9781603296557 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603296540 (Hardcover)
One of the most commonly taught slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is rightly celebrated for its progressive and distinctive appeals to dismantle the dehumanizing system of American slavery. Depicting the abuse Jacobs experienced, her years in hiding, and her escape to the North, the work evokes sympathy for Jacobs as a woman and a mother. Today, it continues to inform readers about gender and sexuality, power and justice, and Black identity in the United States.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” discusses different editions of the work and suggests background readings. The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” explore Jacobs’s literary techniques and influences, drawing on autobiography theory, medical humanities, and theology, among other perspectives. Contributors also propose pairings with historical and recent literary works as well as teaching approaches involving visual arts, geography, archives, digital humanities, and service learning.
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Introduction (3)
Further Reading for Students (3)
Editions and Adaptations (4)
The Instructor’s Library (6)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction (15)
Thematic Approaches
Peeping through the Loopholes of Shame and Silence toward Freedom and Wholeness while Teaching Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (19)
Teaching Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in Historical Context (30)
Reanimating the Unsexed: Using Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl to Recast the Black Body and Redesign Black Female Sexuality (34)
Exploring the Double Consciousness of Harriet Jacobs through Incidents in Her Life (43)
“Reader, Be Assured This Narrative Is No Fiction”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as Rhetorical Theory (50)
Teaching Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as a Southern Gothic Text (56)
Health and Illness in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (62)
Blind Doctors of Divinity: Theological Concepts in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (68)
Intertextual Approaches
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (76)
Truth and Fiction: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the Question of Genre (83)
Incidents in the Life of Archy Moore: Harriet Jacobs and Richard Hildreth (88)
Investigating Childhood Injustice: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson (94)
A Pivotal Text: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in a Narratives of Slavery Course (99)
Reclaiming the Role of the Enslaved Mother in Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (105)
From Celia to Cyntoia: Between Love and the Law in Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Perkins-Valdez’s Wench (111)
Lock and Key: Systemic Literacy and Dialectical Reading in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (117)
From Harriet Jacobs to Assata Shakur: Connections between Past and Present (124)
Teaching Strategies
Repetition and History in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (129)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in an American Literature Survey Course (135)
“Home, Sweet Home”: The Melodrama of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (141)
Beloved in the Attic: Harriet Jacobs’s Confinement (146)
“Future Generations Will Learn from It”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in the Archives (151)
“Something Akin to Freedom”: Recalibrating Conventions in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (156)
“Another Link to Life”: Black Feminist Geography, the Digital Humanities, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (161)
Contextual Approaches
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in a Gender and Women’s Studies Course: Students as Agents of Change (169)
Seeing a “True and Just Account”: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Visual Culture (175)
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Literature by Women (183)
Notes on Contributors (187)
Survey Respondents (191)
Works Cited (193)