The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History together with CIC and the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) will sponsor the seventh in a series of American history seminars for CIC and UNCF faculty members. The seminar on “Slave Narratives” will be led by David W. Blight, professor of American history at Yale University and author of the 2007 volume, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation. The seminar will take place at Yale University on June 15–18, 2008.

Thirty full-time faculty members will be selected for participation from nominations submitted by chief academic officers. For those selected to participate, there is no expense for room, board, books, or the seminar program itself.

The seminar will highlight slave narratives that have recently come to light, and participants will examine both antebellum and postbellum narratives. According to Blight, the pre-emancipation narratives were often serious works of literature as well as works that fit into certain conventions and formulas, tending to focus squarely on the oppression of slavery, on a former slave’s indictment of the institution of bondage as a means of advancing the antislavery argument. In contrast, the post-emancipation narratives tended to be success stories, triumphs over the past, and visions of a more prosperous future. The seminar will use the slave narratives, as well as some other assigned secondary reading, to comprehend the lived experience of slaves themselves in the transition from bondage to freedom.

More information about the American history seminar is available here on the CIC website.