Comparative Slavery
79-237
Carnegie Mellon
University in Qatar
Spring 2017
|
Benjamin Reilly
(Professor) Office 1037 Office Hours: By
appointment, or whenever my door is open |
Course Web Address:
www.qatar.cmu.edu/~breilly2/slavery
Assignments must be
submitted to www.turnitin.com
Class Name: Comparative
Slavery Spring 2017 Class ID:
14319302
Password: slave
Course Goals:
The overall goals of this class are to:
§ Expose students to slavery as a global
phenomenon
§ Clear up many misconceptions students in
the Gulf have about Arab slavery
§ Improve student research and writing
skills
§ Augment student documentary analysis
skills
Students
successfully completing the class will be able to:
ü
Describe
different systems of slavery in the pre-modern and modern world
ü
Articulate
the relationship between race, labor, economics, and power
ü
Break
complex arguments into evidence, conclusion and assumptions, as well as common
logical flaws
ü
Distinguish
between different type of documents and identify each document’s tone, bias,
intended audience, assumptions, and omissions
ü
Write
sophisticated analytical essays that pose an argument and defend it with
relevant information from primary or secondary source texts
In terms of subject matter, this
course will examine systems of slavery in the pre-modern and modern world from
antiquity to the present. We will focus more closely on a handful of case
studies, especially slavery in ancient Greece and Rome, slavery in the Indian
Subcontinent, and slavery in the Atlantic World of the 17th-19th
centuries. As befits a class being taught in the Middle East, we will also
spend a disproportionate amount of time discussing slavery in the Arab society,
from the time of Muhammad to the present. Finally, we will examine the
phenomenon of slavery in the contemporary world, as well as the phenomenon of
expatriate labor in the Gulf, which some media voices have described as
equivalent to modern-day slavery.
Readings
This class has one assigned textbook:
Engerman, Drescher,
and Paquette eds., Slavery. Oxford: Oxford Readers, 2001
In addition,
there will be a number of reading excerpts available to students on blackboard-
see the course calendar to match up the specific readings and dates. These
excerpts are drawn from:
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and
Social Death. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
Mettzer, Milton. Slavery: A World History.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1993.
Goldenberg, David M. The Curse of
Ham: Race and Slavery in Early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2003.
Wiedeman, Thomas. Greek and Roman Slavery.
New York: Routledge, 1981.
Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in
the Middle East. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Klein, Herbert. The
Atlantic Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 200
Equiano, Olaudah. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789),
Chatterjee,
Indrani and Richard M. Eaton. Slavery in South
Asian History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Rutter, Eldon. "Slavery
in Arabia." Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, Vol. 20,
No. 3 (1933), pp. 315-332.
Hopper, Matthew S.
"Debt and Slavery Among Arabian Gulf Pearl Divers." In Gwyn Cambell and Alessandro Stanziani
eds., Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean
World. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013, pp.
103-117.
Clarence-Smith, William
Gervase. "Islamic Abolitionism in the Western Indian Ocean from c.
1800." In Robert Harms, Bernard K. Freamon, and
David W. Blight eds., Indian Ocean Slavery in the Age of Abolition.
London: Yale University Press, 2013, pp. 81-97.
Miers, Suzanne. Slavery in the
Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Problem. New York: AltaMira Press, 2003.
Pipes, Daniel. "Mawlas: Freed Slaves and Converts in Early
Islam." in John Ralph Willis ed., Slaves
and Slavery in Muslim Africa, Vol. 1. New York: Frank Cass, 1985, pp.
199-247.
Vitkus, Daniel J. ed. Piracy,
Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Slavery Narratives from Early Modern England.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.
Reilly, Benjamin. “Mutawalladeen
and Malaria: African Slavery in Arabian Wadis” Journal
of Social History, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2014), p. 1-19.
Classes
Classes will meet Monday and
Wednesday, 4:30-5:50, and are attended by the entire class. The average class
will consists of two parts: 1) a short lecture, usually by the instructor, and
2) a discussion of the reading. Cell phone usage is prohibited during class,
and laptops should only be used for note taking and/or accessing online
readings. There is no attendance policy but regular attendance is STRONGLY
encouraged because students will be accountable for all materials covered in
class in their final exams.
The classes will focus around eight
“big themes”:
1.
What is the origin (are the origins) of slave systems?
2.
Where do you draw the line between slave and free?
3.
What is the relationship between slavery and racism?
4.
How is slavery justified?
5.
To what degree does a given system of slavery reflect its social
and cultural context?
6.
To what degree do economic factors define the shape of slave
systems?
7.
How do slaves resist their conditions of servitude?
8.
How are ex-slaves integrated into their host society after
manumission?
Since
this is a comparative slavery course, each of these questions could be usefully
divided into an almost endless number of sub-questions, for example:
·
How does the origin of slavery amongst the Romans differ from the
origins of slavery amongst the Arabs?
·
What factors account for the differences separating the Arab and
European slave systems in the 19th century?
·
Why did race play little role in Ancient slavery, but a profound
role in Atlantic slavery?
·
Why did Arab slavery last so much longer than Atlantic World
slavery, yet Atlantic world slavery seems have left more of an impact on modern
post-slave society?
And
so on. Students should be thinking about these “big themes” consistently
throughout the course, since the final exam will ask students to answer a
question related to one or more of the big themes.
Assignments and Grading
Grades will be assigned based on the
following schema:
1.
Short Assignments
Over the course of the semester,
students must turn in a total of 8 short one-page essay assignments, at least 4
of which must be submitted before the midterm (see the course schedule below).
Each of these essays must answer one of the “discussion questions” – click here for a list of study questions,
organized by week. Click on any of the “discussion”
listings below to see a sample list of questions. The assignments must be
submitted at the recitation sections that discuss the assigned source. Students
may only submit one question per week; this means that students had better
start early and submit at least one every other week or else they will run out
of time by the semester’s end. Students must answer the questions in an essay
format, with a clearly-articulated one-paragraph introduction, several body
paragraphs to support that introduction, and a brief conclusion. The short
assignments will be graded on your ability to formulate a convincing argument,
firmly based on evidence from the attached document, which clearly addresses
the question asked. Please do not hesitate to contact myself or the Academic
Resource Center (ARC) staff for help. For further assistance, click here for a sample essay. For the essay grading rubric, click here.
2.
Research Paper
Students must complete one long research
paper of approximately 6-8 pages length and utilizing 3-5 academic sources.
Students should meet with the instructors to discuss possible topics. In the
term paper, students will be graded on clarity, style, and the use of
appropriate evidence to defend a clearly-articulated argument (click here for the rubric, which is the same as the
short assignments). Purely narrative papers- which tell a story rather than
analyzing an issue- will receive poor grades. Again, please do not hesitate to
contact myself or the Academic Resource Center for help.
Given the requirement for written
sources, students are expected to take initiative and order sources as soon as
possible in the semester through interlibrary loan.
PLAGIARISM: Plagiarism means to take
the ideas, writing, or arguments of others and pass them off as your own.
Students who share their written materials with others are also guilty of
plagiarism. It is a serious academic
offense. If you quote directly from a book, website, or other source, or if you
want to use the ideas/opinions/conclusions of another author in your writings,
you must enclose that material in quotation marks and indicate the source using
a footnote (click here for a guide on how to include
footnotes in a text). All cases of plagiarism will be handled severely, and
the most common applied penalty will be failure in the course. Note that all
assignments must be submitted via turnitin.com. Remember however that a paper
may still be plagiarized even if turnitin.com does not detect plagiarism,
particularly if intellectual property of other authors (for instance original
ideas or insights) is taken without attribution, or if text cut-and-pasted and
then altered with synonyms. PLAGIARIZISM HAS HISTORICALLY BEEN THE MAIN
REASON STUDENTS FAIL MY COURSES!
3.
Final Exam
The final exam will be given during
in the normal lecture hall during finals week at a time TBD and will cover
material from the lectures, readings, and discussion sections. The final is
closed book. All you need to bring to the exams are two pens; examination
“bluebooks” will be provided. Make-up examinations will only be given in the
case of illness or a serious family emergency, and notification must be given
in writing.
The
exam will consist of two parts, the big
theme essay and the documentary
analysis essay. In the big theme essay, students will be asked
to write a response paper to a question that is closely tied to one of the “big
themes” of the class (see above). Students will be given a list of 6-8 possible
questions three weeks before the final exam in order to prepare for the test.
On the day of the final students will be given 2 of these questions and asked to
pick one and write an essay on it. In the documentary
analysis section, students will be given a document they have not read, but
which is closely related to one of the documents they did read in the class,
and asked to choose and answer one of a number of essay questions. Generally
these questions require students to relate that document to materials covered
in lecture and other documents we have read in class. Grading will follow the
grading rubric for essays (click here for the rubric). Click here for a list of the
possible “big theme” essays, when available.
4.
Class Participation
Students are expected to participate
actively in class. Students can guarantee themselves a full 20 marks if they
come to discussion sections fully prepared (with the readings or other assigned
materials in hand) and are ready to speak, and listen, to other students. It is
not necessary to have brilliant insights every week to receive full marks-
regular attendance and active, informed participation will be sufficient.
Class participation is grades as
follows. Recorded attendance at a lecture earns students 1 mark, while
meaningful participation in the discussion will earn 2 or even 3 marks. At
midterm and final each student’s marks will be tallied and then located on a
bell curve. Students who get an average number of aggregate marks will get an
average class participation grade (“average” to be defined by instructors at
the time grades are assigned). Those with higher than average and lower than
average marks will earn higher or lower class participation grades, and thus
higher or lower fractions of the 20-points contributed by class participation
to their overall grade.
Students may also earn class participation
through “facilitation,” in which they take charge of leading a class.
Facilitating students should lead discussions, make presentations, organize
debates or other activities, and otherwise lead the class, in consultation with
the course instructor.
LATE WORK POLICY: Papers that are received
after the due date are marked down 10% for the first day, 20% for the second
day, and 30% for the third. After the third day the student will receive a 0 on
the assignment. For the purposes of this policy, any work received on the day
of class but after the start time of the class is assessed the 10% penalty.
Course Calendar (note
S=Sunday, T=Tuesday, R=Thursday)
Note: click here for the study questions for the
readings
|
Date |
Subject |
Readings
[on blackboard, if not in Slavery text] |
Notes |
|
M
Jan 16 |
Discussion of syllabus, initial surveys |
|
|
|
W
Jan 18 |
What is slavery? |
Orlando, Introduction |
|
|
M
Jan 23 |
Ancient Slavery
|
Meltzer, Ch. 1.2 |
|
|
W
Jan 25 |
Israeli Slavery and the Curse of Ham |
Slavery, pp. 60-61,93-95, Goldenberg, Ch. 9 |
|
|
M
Jan 30 |
Intellectual Origins of Greek Slavery |
Slavery, pp. 9-14 |
|
|
W Feb 1 |
Greek and Roman Slavery |
Wiedemann,
introductory outline |
|
|
M Feb 6 |
Islamic Slavery - Origins |
Pipes on Mawlas |
|
|
W Feb 8 |
Islamic Military Slavery |
Lewis Ch. 9 and Bacharach |
|
|
W Feb 13 |
Race and Slavery in Islam |
Lewis Ch. 2, 4, 5, and 6 |
|
|
M Feb 15 |
Agricultural Slavery in Arabia |
Reilly, Mutawalladeen
and Malaria |
|
|
W Feb 20 |
Slavery in Medieval and Renaissance Europe |
Meltzer, Ch. 1.23 and 1.24 |
|
|
M Feb 22 |
Slavery in Africa |
Slavery, pp. 52-56, 399-401 |
|
|
W Feb 27 |
Development of the Atlantic Slave Trade |
Klein, Ch. 2 |
|
|
W Mar 1 |
Slave Life in the Atlantic World |
Equiano, up to at least p. 20 |
deadline for submitting first 4 short
essays |
|
March 5-11 Spring Break |
|||
|
M Mar 13 |
Race and Slavery in the Atlantic Economy |
Slavery, pp. 68-72, 142-144 |
|
|
W Mar 15 |
Slaves and the Law |
Slavery, pp. 105-113 |
|
|
M Mar 20 |
European Abolitionism |
Slavery, pp. 447-453 |
|
|
W Mar 22 |
Abolition and Emancipation in America |
Slavery, pp. 36-39, 455-458 |
|
|
M Mar 27 |
Slavery in India |
Eaton, Military Slavery in the Deccan |
|
|
W Mar 29 |
Slavery and Empire |
Vatuk,
Bharattee’s Death |
|
|
M Apr 3 |
Islamic Slavery through Christian Eyes |
William Okeley’s Slave
Narrative |
|
|
W Apr 5 |
Slave trade to Arabia |
Reilly, A Well-Intentioned Failure |
|
|
M Apr 10 |
Slavery in Arabia |
Rutter, Slavery in Arabia |
list of “big theme” essays questions for
the final exam posted |
|
W Apr 12 |
Slaves to the Pearl |
Hopper, Debt and Slavery |
|
|
M Apr 17 |
Islamic Abolitionism in Theory |
Clarence-Smith |
|
|
W Apr 19 |
Islamic Abolitionism in Practice |
Meirs
on Abolition |
|
|
M Apr 24 |
Contemporary Slavery |
Miers
on Modern slavery |
|
|
W Apr 26 |
Neoslavery
in the Gulf? |
Report on Migrant Labor Recruitment in
Qatar, Chapter 1 |
|
|
Midnight, Weds April 26th |
|
|
Deadline for term paper |
|
Final Exam: TBD |
|||