Wilkes University History Professor Diane Wenger Attends National Seminar Studying Use of Slave Narratives In History

Diane Wenger, Wilkes University associate professor of history and co-chair of the
Division of Global Cultures, participated in a special Diane Wenger, Wilkes University associate professor of history and co-chair of the
Division of Global Cultures, participated in a special American history seminar on
“Slave Narratives.” It was sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges and the
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Wenger was selected from a pool of 66
highly competitive nominations nationwide.
Twenty-seven faculty members in history, English, and related fields participated
in the seminar which was held at Yale University June 19-24. The faculty members used
slave narratives as well as secondary readings to examine the lived experience of
slaves themselves in the transition from bondage to freedom. The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation funded the seminar.
“Attending the CIC Slave Narrative Seminar was an extraordinary experience,” Wenger
said. “It gave me the opportunity to discuss the experiences of enslaved African-Americans,
using testimonies from slaves themselves, who experienced slavery's horrors firsthand,
with a diverse group of college educators from around the country as well as with
Yale and Harvard professors who are specialists in this discipline.”
Wenger reviewed works from both literary and historical perspectives, examining how
the legacy of slavery continues to impact American society and attitudes towards race
today. Throughout the seminar, faculty shared effective ways to use the assigned works
to teach and create assignments for students.
Wenger will use excerpts from the selected slave narratives in her First Year Foundations
course and American History courses in the fall. She also plans to create a new class
related to the seminar information.
“The main product of my experience at the seminar will be to develop a new special
topics class on Slave Narratives in American History that I will offer in Spring 2017,”
Wenger explained. “I am really excited about teaching this course and I am very grateful
to CIC and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for the opportunity to
attend the seminar and bring back what I learned to my students at Wilkes.”
The seminar participants examined antebellum and postbellum narratives including 65
narratives published prior to the Civil War which focused on the oppression of slavery
and former slaves’ indictment of the institution of bondage as a means of advancing
the antislavery argument. They also studied 55 post-emancipation narratives which
contained success stories on triumphs of the past and visions of a prosperous future.
Faculty also examined the pre-war narrative of Frederick Douglass and the post-war
narrative of Booker T. Washington along with several other books including A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation
by David W. Blight, professor of American History at Yale University. John Stauffer,
professor of English and of African American Studies at Harvard University and Edward
Rugemer, professor of African American Studies and history at Yale University led
the seminar.