English 362e
Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Archive
Adena Spingarn
Autumn 2014
Thursdays, 2:15-5:05pm, Lathrop 292
Office hours: M 10am-12pm; TH 11am-12pm
303 Building 460 (Margaret Jacks)
Over the past few decades, scholars of literary studies have increasingly looked to the archive
in order to formulate new understandings of literary and cultural history and develop new
interpretations of texts. This course is an introduction to the methods, theories, and politics of the
archive in literary studies, using Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and its extensive
archives as the frame. A sensation in the United States and all over the world, Stowe’s novel was the
best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible. It inspired not only a dynamic critical
conversation but also a vast network of literary, cultural, and political responses, including stage
adaptations, visual culture, consumer products, and political rhetoric, among other things. In this
course, readings in the methods, theory, and politics of the archive will support and challenge our
investigation of this novel’s forms of circulation, reception, and contexts, as well as the adaptations,
revisions, and remediations it inspired. The course will also emphasize the development of practical
research skills in traditional and digital archives.
COURSE TEXTS
Scans of articles and book chapters will be posted on Coursework.
Texts available at the Stanford bookstore:
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (University of Chicago Press) ISBN-13:
9780226143675
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (Vintage) ISBN-13: 9780679732761
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (Vintage) ISBN-13: 9780394711065
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Penguin) ISBN-13: 9780140184020
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Norton Critical Edition) ISBN-13: 9780393933994
ASSIGNMENTS
Weekly discussion questions: By midnight the night before class (Wednesday), post a discussion
question on Coursework. It should include a specific citation (quoted and with page numbers) from
one of the readings.
Seminar presentation and paper: Use an archival method to interpret one of the literary readings
on the syllabus or an item in Special Collections related to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. During the final class
meeting, you will present a conference-style version of this paper and receive feedback.
CLASS SCHEDULE
September 25
Week 1: Introduction and Special Collections visit
October 2
Readings:
Week 2: Poetics and the Archive
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, vol. 1 (*Norton)
Ed Folsom, “Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives,” PMLA
122.5 (October 2007), pp. 1571-1579.
Meredith McGill, “Remediating Whitman,” PMLA 122.5 (October 2007), pp.
1592-1596.
October 9
Readings:
Week 3: Publication, Circulation, and Reception
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, vol. 2 (*Norton)
George Sand, “Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (*Norton UTC, pp. 495-499)
Ethiop, “Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (*Norton UTC, pp. 502-503)
“The Uncle Tom Epidemic,” The Literary World (New York: December 4, 1852)
(http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/notices/noar22at.html)
Robert S. Levine, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Frederick Douglass’s Paper: An Analysis of
Reception” [American Literature 64.1 (March 1992), pp. 71-93] (*Norton
UTC, pp. 562-582)
Claire Parfait, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Book, 1852-1853,” The Publishing History of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852-2002 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 67-89.
October 16
Readings:
Week 4: Paratext and Parallel Texts
* Bring Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Margaret Cohen, “Narratology in the Archive of Literature: Literary Studies’
Return to the Archive,” Representations 108.1 (Fall 2009), pp. 51-75.
Ezra Tawil, “Stowe’s Vanishing Americans: ‘Negro’ Interiority, Captivity, and
Homecoming in Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery
and the Birth of the Frontier Romance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), pp. 152-190.
Jo-Ann Morgan, “Picturing Uncle Tom with Little Eva: Reproduction as Legacy,”
in Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Visual Culture (University of Missouri Press, 2007),
pp. 20-63.
Sarah Meer, “Copycat Critics: The Anti-Tom Novel and the Fugitive Slave,” Uncle
Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s (Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2005), pp. 75-102.
October 23
Readings:
Week 5: Adaptation, Revision, and Remediation
* Bring Uncle Tom’s Cabin
George Aiken, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/onstage/scripts/aikenhp.html)
H. J. Conway, Uncle Tom’s Cabin
(http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/onstage/scripts/conwayhp.html)
Robin Bernstein, “Everyone is Impressed: Slavery as Tender Embrace from Uncle
Tom’s to Uncle Remus’s Cabin,” Racial Innocence: Performing American
Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York University Press, 2011), pp.
92-145.
Sarah Meer, “Minstrelsy, Melodrama, and Reform Drama: ‘Uncle Tom’ Plays in
New York,” Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy, and Transatlantic Culture in the
1850s (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005), pp. 105-131.
*Meeting time TBD; class will need to be rescheduled.
Week 6: Theory of the Archive
* Also during this class meeting: digital archives and key word searches
Readings:
Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Vintage, 1972):
Introduction + Part III, pp. 3-17; 79-131.
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1995).
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November 6
Week 7: Literature as History
* In this class, we will informally discuss seminar paper ideas. Be prepared to discuss your
preliminary research question and how you plan to approach it.
Readings:
James Weldon Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Langston Hughes, “Uncle Tom [1],” “Uncle Tom [2],” “Epitaph,” “Colonel Tom’s
Cabin”
Allan H. Pasco, “Literature as Historical Archive,” New Literary History 35.3
(Summer 2004), pp. 373-394.
Rebecca Peabody, “Strategies of Visual Intervention: Langston Hughes and Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” Comparative Literature 64.2 (2012), pp. 169-191.
November 13
Week 8: Politics of the Archive
Readings:
* Bring Uncle Tom’s Cabin
James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (*Norton UTC, pp. 532-539)
David Greetham, “‘Who’s In, Who’s Out’: The Cultural Poetics of Archival
Exclusion,” Studies in the Literary Imagination 32.1 (Spring 1999), pp. 1-28.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the
Archives,” History and Theory 24.3 (October 1985), pp. 247-272.
Barbara Hochman, “Devouring Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Black Readers between Plessy
v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education,” in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the
Reading Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011), pp.
231-251.
November 20
Week 9: Influence
Readings:
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
December 4
Week 10: Conference Presentations
*Saturday, December 13 by noon (12:00pm): Seminar paper due
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