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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The Black Wanderer: Reading The Black Diaspora, Resistance, And Becoming In The History Of Mary Prince In The Classroom, Nicole Carr
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This paper examines The History of Mary Prince as a pedagogical tool for exploring complexities within the Black Diaspora. As Paul Gilroy’s articulations of the Black Atlantic inform my approach, Prince’s circuitous journey through the West Indies and England situates her process of becoming as one mired in longing and loss. Encouraging students to consider Prince as a wandering soul in search of not only freedom, but also solid familiar connections lays the foundation for merging her narrative with other enslaved Black people traversing countries and regions on ships against their will. Ample research material available on the survivors of …
Black Lives, White Witnesses: An Argument For A Presentist Approach To Teaching Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Sharon Smith
Black Lives, White Witnesses: An Argument For A Presentist Approach To Teaching Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, Sharon Smith
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
This essay outlines a presentist approach to teaching Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko (1688), in which a white woman witnesses a Black man’s brutal execution at the hands of enslavers. This approach explores the capacity of Behn’s novel—a colonialist narrative scholars frequently identify as troubling or frustrating—to generate discussions about “white witnessing,” particularly white people’s consumption of images of Black people in peril. This includes recent videos of Black people killed by police or white citizen vigilantes. Many Black individuals identify these videos as traumatizing, frequently noting how they have failed to spur structural reform. Of central concern in the classroom discussion …