HUM 389: Reading Reflection Prompt for:

“Challenges to 19thc Black Stereotypes–Literature” (use this for your “title” line)

*Before submitting your first RR, be sure you have reviewed the general info handout on RRs posted to the RR menu tab (particularly the sections on minimum length, formatting, submission requirements, general content, and avoiding plagiarism). Also note that you can find a sample blank rubric posted to RR menu tab which will show you the criteria I will use in evaluating your reflection.

Assigned Content*: see the daily folder (short intro videos + BR and CP pages listed there)

*NOTE: the video author intros and brief BR intro to the Jacobs text are provided to give you needed context for understanding analyzing our CP excerpts, but the focus of your written RR should be firmly on relevant specifics from the CP pages themselves (not the intro material).

Prompt : In your reflection of 2-4 pages (using required formatting), compare our CP “Excerpt #3” from Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave found on CP 37-39 to the excerpts from Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl found on CP 43-46, addressing such points of comparison as:

· the specific nature of the abuse suffered by the narrator of each text

· the action taken (in the Douglass text) or plan made (in the Jacobs text) by each narrator to end or (in the Jacobs text) escape that specific abuse

· how the actions of each narrator affect their abusers

(in the case of the Jacobs text, this would be how the narrator imagines/predicts her planned action will affect him)

· what each narrator describes as the personal/psychological effects (upon themselves) of their action/planned action to end/escape the abuse

Conclude your thoughts by reflecting on what role gender difference seems to play in comparing the Douglass and Jacobs excerpts.

Be sure to use concise, well-chosen specific quotes from various parts of each of the two CP pages ranges for the assigned excerpts (i.e., CP 37-39 for Douglass and CP 43-46 for Jacobs) to support/illustrate what you see as the points of direct similarity and/or difference between the two texts. When you quote from the readings, “do it like this” (CP page number goes here). Remember that use of specific quotes is required for all RRs, and points will be deducted for quotes which are missing parenthetical page number citations keyed to our CP/BR pages.