HIST233 - Black Atlantic Lives

Life histories provide engaging and challenging ways to encounter the past. This course explores the advantages and limitations of biography and microhistory as genres of historical writing by focusing on individuals and communities whose stories illuminate and reconfigure broader themes in early Atlantic and African diasporic history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Students will consider case studies of figures such as Oluadah Equiano, Queen Nanny of the Maroons, and Nat Turner alongside methodological writings by historians such as Jill Lepore, Wendy Anne Warren, and Marisa Fuentes in order to understand how scholars make use of individual and collective life histories to construct arguments and narratives about the past. Major themes include slavery and emancipation, migration, empire, gender, sexuality, and religion. Students will work collaboratively to produce a wiki composed of short biographical entries.