Calling out liberty
Calling out liberty: the Stono slave rebellion and the universal struggle for human rights
On Sunday, September 9, 1739, twenty Kongolese enslaved armed themselves by breaking into a storehouse near the Stono River south of Charleston, South Carolina. These rebels killed twenty-three white colonists, joined forces with other enslaved people, and marched toward Spanish Florida where they expected to find freedom. Before the day ended, however, the rebellion was crushed and many surviving rebels executed. South Carolina responded quickly with a comprehensive slave code that reinforced white power through laws meant to control the ability of enslaved to communicate.
The Stono Rebellion serves as a touchstone for Calling Out Liberty, an exploration of human rights in early America. Expanding upon historical analyses of this rebellion, Jack Shuler suggests a relationship between the Stono rebels and human rights discourse in early American literature. Though human rights scholars and policy makers often offer the European Enlightenment as the source of contemporary ideas about human rights, this book repositions the sources of these important and often challenged American ideals.
Jack Shuler is assistant professor of English at Denison University. He earned his Ph.D. in English from the Graduate Center–CUNY in 2007. His book Calling Out Liberty: The Stono Slave Rebellion and the Universal Struggle for Human Rights (Mississippi University Press, 2009) explores the development of human rights in early America repositioning the assumed sources of these important and often challenged ideals. His criticism, interviews, and poems have appeared in the Columbia Journal of American Studies, South Carolina Review, Fast Capitalism, Reconstructions: Studies in Contemporary Culture, Hanging Loose, The Brooklyn Review, Big City Lit, and Failbetter. His current book project, Blood and Bone: Truth and Reconciliation in a Southern Town (University of South Carolina Press, Forthcoming), examines the killing of three students on the campus of a historically black college in 1968.
Datum: Vrijdag 15 oktober 2010
Locatie: Ninsee, Linnaeusstraat 35f, 1093 EE Amsterdam
17.30 – 18:00 uur : Inloop
18.00 – 18.45 uur : Presentatie. dr. J. Shuler
18.45 – 19.00 uur : Vragenronde/Discussie
Contact: Drs. Ruth Dors, r.dors@ninsee.nl of telefoon (020) 568 2083
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