Gender Roles in Classic Antebellum African American Autobiographies

Webinar Leader

William Andrews

E. Maynard Adams Professor of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Webinar Details

How did the institution of chattel slavery affect gender roles among enslaved men and women? What role does marriage play in classic antebellum African American autobiographies? This webinar will address these and other questions by analyzing the autobiographies of Jarena Lee (1836), Frederick Douglass (1845), Sojourner Truth (1850), Harriet Jacobs (1861), and Thomas H. Jones (1862). Typically, male-authored African American autobiographies of the nineteenth century emphasize individual mission or calling as the driving force in a man’s life. The autobiographies of their female contemporaries usually present marriage and family as a woman’s primary social responsibilities. However, when we study these foundational texts of African American autobiography, we find that they both conform to and diverge from dominant ideas about gender roles and social missions among black Americans before Emancipation.