S04E08 | Teaching Harriet Jacobs in the Archives

C19: America in the 19th Century

This episode highlights the ways that librarians and faculty can partner in designing assignments that draw on archival records to emphasize the cultural, political, and social significance of nineteenth-century literary texts. Specifically, we explore the affordances of using archival records, particularly bills of sale for enslaved people, to teach Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Wake Forest University English faculty and Special Collections and Archives librarians talk about the discoveries students make through assignments that allow them to incorporate nineteenth-century historical documents from slavery into their reading and analysis of Jacobs’s narrative. We also consider the significant emotional challenges that this kind of direct material engagement poses, discussing the ways we have presented and revised our assignments to account for potentially traumatic triggering. Episode produced by Carrie Johnston (Digital Humanities Research Designer), Rian Bowie (Associate Teaching Professor of English), Megan Mulder (Special Collections Librarian), Tanya Zanish-Belcher (Director of Special Collections and Archives) and Brianna Derr (Wake Forest University Information Systems). Additional production support from Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full episode transcript with additional links available here: https://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E08