Compulsory and elective courses

Objectives

After completing the course, the students are expected to be able to:

• account in detail for the main historical processes involving slavery in a global context,
• apply complex concepts and terminologies relating to slavery and bonded labour, 
• compare and critically and independently discuss the main theories on the cause of enslavement and slave labour,
• apply a historical perspective in order to understand the persistence of enslaved labour in the modern world, and efforts to eradicate such practices, 
• reflect on the perception and treatment of slavery in literary works.

Content

The course offers a critical overview of slavery and slave trade on a global level, surveying the research trends of the last decades. Historical as well as literary perspectives are applied. Hitherto neglected groups with a slave­like status, in places like India, China, and Korea, are explored. Attention is also paid to the plight of humans in the contemporary world with a bonded and permanently subservient status. The course addresses the importance of looking beyond the particular slave systems of the world and to reflect on connections and comparisons between different regions. It also aims to challenge the Atlantic paradigm that has tended to see slavery from a matrix of European­led employment of slave labour. Attention is paid to recent methodological shifts, which have yielded new information about slavery as a condition and a process, not least illuminating its gendered aspects. During the course, the structural variety of enslavement and degrees of unfree status across the world will be discussed. Economic­ historical theories on the rationale of slavery are surveyed. Moreover, the memories and narratives of slavery in literary texts are analyzed.