This course will explore how the history of chattel slavery has been taken up and reimagined in a variety of contemporary cultural texts. It will examine not only how these texts (re)conceptualize and (re)historicize the experience of slavery, but also how the racial, sexual, gender and economic dynamics set in place by slavery have been commented on and (re)configured within contemporary culture. At the center of the course are thus questions about how contemporary cultural texts about slavery advance arguments about historical continuity (and/or discontinuity)—that is, how they imagine how things have changed and how they have remained the same over time. More specifically, how do texts about slavery allow for comprehension of both changing racial formations and the persistence of particular forms of racial and economic exploitation. Necessarily related issues to be taken up over the course of the quarter include the history of human commodification, the relative power of different cultural forms and genres to narrate the history of slavery, and the special role of literature in the creation of historical memory and cultural critique. Over the course of the quarter we will read several contemporary novels, view one or two recent films, and explore a range of theoretical and historiographical works on slavery and dehumanization.