23 May 2017: "I just keep thinking about Thomas Jefferson and how much worse his actions look in this light..." --a student in my ENGL 355: American Ethnic Literature class this morning.
We were discussing Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, specifically Dr. Flint, in my opinion one of the greatest and most interesting (and I don't mean that with admiration) villains in American literature. But I hadn't had a student make this connection to Jefferson before. I could see where he was coming from: Jacobs's text shows us just how trapped a female slave was by her master--how little control she had over her own life, her own body, her future. You feel that pain and horror when you read her book. And then you think about Jefferson, one of the most important and fascinating and complicated figures in our history and realize that he put slaves in similar positions (even if he wasn't as evil, whatever that means)...and it shakes you.
So yeah...two days into the summer session, I'd say it's going well.
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