Problem Based Learning
Should literary works be censored to reflect current morality and social norms?
What has been said of Moby-Dick—that it’s the greatest novel no one ever reads—could just as well be said of any number of American “classics” like The Scarlet Letter, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This course reconsiders a small number of nineteenth-century American novels by presenting each in a surprising context.
This seminar looks at two bestselling nineteenth-century American authors whose works made the subject of slavery popular among mainstream readers. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain have subsequently become canonized and reviled, embraced and banned by individuals and groups at both ends of the political and cultural spectrum and everywhere in between.