VOICES OF THE ENSLAVED
07.12.2022
6.45-7.15 pm
Room: Willi-Gaisch-Saal (06.01) (Universitätsplatz 6/EG)
Who speaks from the condition of slavery? Who hears? Who takes action—and why? This talk will examine the context and rhetoric of selected stories of enslavement to challenge our assumptions about the British Parliament’s abolition of slavery. We will look at the words of Mary Prince (The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave (related by herself) 1831) and James Williams (A Narrative of Events, Since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed labourer in Jamaica,1837.
Michelle Gadpaille is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Maribor, Slovenia. She is the author of works on Canadian studies (The Canadian Short Story, 1988; As She Should Be: Codes of Conduct in Early Canadian Women’s Writing, 2010); Cultural studies (“Eating Dirt, Being Dirt: Backgrounds to the Story of Slavery”, 2014; The Ethical Atlantic: Advocacy Networking and the Slavery Narrative, 2019) and the co-editor of Engendering Difference: Sexism, Power and Politics (2018).