Department of History
Amount Awarded: $7,494
Awarded for 2018-19
Title: "Comparative Slavery" Course Development Workshops
Professor Voltz taught a course on comparative slaveries (HIST 3910) in Fall 2018. We used a Dee Grant to invite slavery scholars to the class to offer a more global perspective on slave systems including enslaved women in the Islamic medieval period, slave law in colonial Peru, the role of medicine and race in the eighteenth-century British Empire, and contemporary slavery.
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In Spring 2018, Professors Noel Voltz (History) and Nicole Giannella (formerly History) received a grant for $7494.00 from the Council of Dee Fellows to fund the development of a new course on “Comparative Slaveries” (History 3690) Unfortunately, Dr. Giannella took a job at Cornell before we piloted the course, so Dr. Voltz continued with the course/grant plan on her own.
Our new “Comparative Slaveries” course introduced students to the different forms, embodiments, and definitions of slavery across time and the globe. In particular, I invited slavery scholars from other universities to my class to give my students a more global and methodologically diverse perspective on slave systems. Our first guest scholar was Dr. Elizabeth Urban, an Assistant Professor of History at West Chester University, whose work focuses on gender and slavery in early Islamic World. We then invited Dr. Michelle McKinley, the Bernard B Kliks Professor of Law at the University of Oregon, to speak on her latest monograph Fractional Freedoms: Slavery, Intimacy, and Legal Mobilization in Colonial Lima (Cambridge, 2016) which focuses slavery and freedom in Colonial Peru. Following Dr. McKinley, Dr. Suman Seth, an Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, visited campus. Dr. Seth’s work focuses on the intersections of medicine, race and slavery in the 18th century British Empire. Finally, we concluded the semester with a presentation by Dr. Jessica Pliley, an Associate Professor of History at Texas State University. Dr. Piley’s work focuses on sex trafficking and “white slavery” in the 20th century. In addition to these guest scholars, several colleagues from the History Department also gave lectures on slave systems in other parts of the world. These scholars included: Dr. Maile Arvin – lavery in the Pacific Islands, Dr. Ben Cohen – slavery in India, Dr. Becky Horn – slavery in pre-columbian Native America, and Dr. ShawnKim Lowey Ball – slavery in Southeast Asia.
Taken together, these scholars illuminated important dimensions of slavery in various geographical and temporal spaces in history. They, in collaboration with Dr. Giannella and Dr. Voltz, guided students through an exploration of the intersecting themes of law, race, gender, sexuality, and science within the construction of slave systems. Together the class explored canonical questions such as what constitutes a slave society and whether a universal definition is a constructive paradigm, to specific questions about how to understand the role of law, gender and sexuality, science, and race in a particular society. Our aim was to give students a truly comparative and global history of slavery so they can develop a language of analysis and critique that is not hindered by time period.
With Dee grant funding, in addition to sponsorship we received from the History Department, Gender Studies, Latin American Studies, and the Law School, we brought our four guest scholars to campus in Fall 2019. While here, each visiting scholar presented at two speaking engagements. First, they guest taught one class session of the History 3910 course in which they led students through study of the slave system in their specific area of expertise. Following their classroom guest lectures, each scholar gave a public lecture on their research on slavery. These public lectures were well attended with between 50 and 100 people in the audience at each talk. Finally, each of the guest scholars participated in a pedagogy breakfast in which we invited faculty, graduate students, and undergrads to come for breakfast and discuss pedagogical strategies for teaching slavery.
The Comparative Slavery course was quite successful as is evidenced by enrollment data and the student evaluations for the course. The pilot run of the course enrolled 39 undergraduates and one graduate student. Student feedback reports gave the course a 5.8, a score well above averages for the Department, College and the University. Given the clear success of the course, I will be submitting “Comparative Slaveries” for permanent adoption in the History course catalogue and plan to offer the class biennially as a part of my regular teaching schedule.