HTY/POL 301 Career Prep and HTY 339: Historiographical Essays and HTY 499/POL 499 Senior Seminar: Frederick Douglas and Family (Second Wife)

Former slave, orator, journalist, autobiographer; revolutionary on behalf of a just America, Frederick Douglass was a towering figure, at once consummately charismatic and flawed. His Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) galvanized the antislavery movement and is one of the truly seminal works of African-American literature. In this masterful and compelling biography, William S. McFeely captures the many sides of Douglass--his boyhood on the Chesapeake; his self-education; his rebellion and rising expectations; his marriage, affairs, and intense friendships; his bitter defeat and transcendent courage--and recreates the high drama of a turbulent era.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw both the consolidation of American print culture and the establishment of an African American literary tradition, yet the two are too rarely considered in tandem. In this landmark volume, a stellar group of established and emerging scholars ranges over periods, locations, and media to explore African Americans' diverse contributions to early American print culture, both on the page and off. The book's chapters consider domestic novels and gallows narratives, Francophone poetry and engravings of Liberia, transatlantic lyrics and San Francisco newspapers. Together, they consider how close attention to the archive can expand the study of African American literature well beyond matters of authorship to include issues of editing, illustration, circulation, and reading--and how this expansion can enrich and transform the study of print culture more generally.

A unique and moving collection of prayers by African-Americans spanning two centuries that has sold more than 30,000 copies and been unanimously embraced as "a powerful testament of faith and hope" (Corettta Scott King).