Approaches to Teaching Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Strategies for teaching a classic abolitionist text

One of the most commonly taught slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is rightly celebrated for its progressive and distinctive appeals to dismantle the dehumanizing system of American slavery. Depicting the abuse Jacobs experienced, her years in hiding, and her escape to the North, the work evokes sympathy for Jacobs as a woman and a mother. Today, it continues to inform readers about gender and sexuality, power and justice, and Black identity in the United States.

Part 1 of this volume, ＂Materials,＂ discusses different editions of the work and suggests background readings. The essays in part 2, ＂Approaches,＂ explore Jacobs’s literary techniques and influences, drawing on autobiography theory, medical humanities, and theology, among other perspectives. Contributors also propose pairings with historical and recent literary works as well as teaching approaches involving visual arts, geography, archives, digital humanities, and service learning.

This volume contains discussion of William Wells Brown’s Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself; Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall; Richard Hildreth’s The Slave, later republished as Archy Moore; Herman Melville’s Typee; Toni Morrison’s Beloved; Dolan Perkins-Valdez’s Wench; Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson; Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad; and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig.