American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"

Lecture 3: “Other Declarations of Independence”

Discussion of the politics of slavery and abolition in colonial American society and the early Republic; the emergence of the African colonization movement and the American Colonization Society; creation of the African Methodist Episcopal church; the formation of free black communities in the North; early African-American protest and its impact on abolitionism; David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829); the life and writings of Pequod activist William Apess; white social views on Native Americans; and African-Native American relations.

Lecture 4: “Millennial Vistas”

Continued discussion of Walker’s Appeal; use of the Declaration of Independence in the political rhetoric of American social protest movements; the rise of abolitionism, from early free black immediatism to white abolitionism (e.g. Garrisonianism); millennialism, racial and sexual egalitarianism, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855). Includes a recommended dramatic reading (by Tim McCarthy) of Susan Garnet Smith’s love letter to Whitman.

From: American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"

Lecture 5: “A House Divided”

Discussion of Whitman and working people; Henry David Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and “Civil Disobedience” (1848); rise of abolitionism and the role of women in the movement; the 1848 Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention; Frederick Douglass, public speaking, and the 1845 Narrative; extended analysis of Douglass’ ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’ speech (1852); George Fitzhugh and the proslavery argument.

From: American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"

Lecture 6: "The Sentimental Imagination"

Discussion of Lydia Maria Child and the scandal of ‘amalgamation’; responses to student questions on Whitman, Lincoln, and Thoreau; antebellum racial phenotypes and pseudo-scientific racism; visual and print culture of the abolitionist movement; stages of slave narrative production; characteristics of slave narratives; background of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its immense popularity and controversy; Stowe’s religion and conversion experience; James Baldwin’s famous essay on Stowe’s racial stereotyping; definition and rise of literary sentimentalism.

American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"

Lecture 7: "The War of Words"

Continued discussion of Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as classic work of American protest literature; romantic racialism; John Brown’s life and prison letters.

American Protest Literature Lecture Videos (Harvard University) from "Literature and Arts A-86: American Protest Literature from Tom Paine to Tupac"