#403 The Abolitionists, part 2: Truth and Jacobs

Setup/critical terms:

• We will examine three important concepts that will help inform our conversation.
  
• For the first two, please provide a definition and an example (from any context or time period):
  
  • Patriarchy
  • Misogyny
    

• For the third, intersectionality, a definition is provided below:
  
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw: “The view that women experience oppression in varying configurations and in varying degrees of intensity. Cultural patterns of oppression are not only interrelated, but are bound together and influenced by the intersectional systems of society. Examples of this include race, gender, class, ability, and ethnicity.”
    
  • What might be a present-day example of someone experiencing intersectional oppression?
    
• At the mid-nineteenth century, the early women’s movement grew out of moral advocacy for temperance and abolition.
  

Discussion:

• In pairs, discuss the “consider” questions from last night:
  
  • Why do you think Sojourner Truth was invited to speak to feminists in Akron, Ohio, in 1851? Why do you think that it is considered one of the most important speeches in the early women’s rights movement? Are the answers to these two questions the same or different?
    
  • Harriet Jacobs describes her master as “my old tyrant.” Where have we heard the term “tyrant” before? How is this type of tyranny similar or different to what we have discussed before?​
    
• On your card, write down at least one question designed to extend the conversation you have started about the texts. Your question should encourage your peers to engage critically with one or both of our readings.
  
• Finally, we will open up the discussion. Like our normal class sessions, we will aim to be aware of others before we speak up without resorting to raising hands. However, unlike our normal class sessions, you can raise your card to pause the conversation to ask a question from your card that might be:
  
  • (a) relevant to the current flow of conversation, or
    
  • (b) redirect the conversation in a more productive direction.
    

Last 10 minutes of class: Cast of Characters individual writing #2

• Question:
  
  • How might your assigned character respond to the approaches to abolitionism we have reviewed over the past two sessions? (These have included gradual emancipation, colonization, the religious advocacy of William Lloyd Garrison, the views of Walker and Douglass, as well as today’s readings from Truth and Jacobs).
    

Homework: Assignment #404