Anita Gustafson taught a fall freshman seminar entitled Slave Narratives: Triumph and Tragedy. The purpose of the course, according to the syllabus, was "to examine both famous and lesser-known slave narratives in order to recover stories of both triumph and tragedy." Gustafson also hoped to "improve skills in reading comprehension, analysis, essay writing, and discussion." The course focused on how people tell their stories, what is included and where the writers start, prompting the students to think about what they would put in their own stories. The class met twice a week for half the semester "to keep the momentum going."

Finding that students do not have much to discuss in class unless they have significant amounts of reading, Gustafson assigned "a fairly hefty reading load."The class read A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom by David W. Blight and Classic Slave Narratives, edited by Henry Louis Gates.

INFORMAL WRITING
Gustafson attended the workshop on low-risk writing led by Chris Anson in May 2008 and put
the ideas to work in her classes. She assigned informal writing along with more formal assignments in the freshman seminar. Students wrote short papers in response to questions about the reading. These responses then fueled class discussion. Gustafson planned an interactive class, assigning 35% of the grade to class participation.

One informal assignment, for example, asked students to respond to questions about two chapters of a slave narrative: "What view of Africa and of Africans does Equiano convey and why do you think he wanted to project such an image?" In class she put two columns on the board and asked for the characteristics (the what) of Africa and Africans. After students volunteered the ideas for the two lists, Gustafson followed with the why questions and prodded the students' thinking about audience: "To whom is he writing? Who is his ideal reader? What witness does he give to the conditions of slavery?" She had her own answers ready to add to what the students volunteered. The informal writing counted 25% of the grade. For another assignment, Gustafson asked students to point out similarities with previous narratives and "unique aspects" of the new story. She asked students to "write short paragraphs explaining each point."

FORMAL WRITING
Gustafson assigned two short formal papers she called microthemes, short papers between two and two and a half pages double-spaced. The prompt for the first paper, based upon Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, asked the students to take the role of a white New Englander in 1846 who read the book. In this identity the students were to write a letter to a friend about the impact of the book, "what you think about it and what, if anything, you intend to do to act on your thoughts." The students could be "abolitionists, a person lukewarm about anti-slavery, or a person who supports the slave system in the South." Each paper counted 10% of the course grade.

The final paper pulled together what they had studied all semester. The assignment asked, "Based upon these class readings, do you believe that slave narratives should best be understood as stories of triumph or tragedy? Explain and defend your response using examples from the narratives themselves." Students could draw on the informal writing to write this final paper. Gustafson expected students to answer the question in a thesis or main argument that the papers should "develop and explain." She stressed that "spelling and grammar count!" The final paper counted 20% of the grade. Purvis Cornish, a student in the class, said that last paper was his favorite because he was able to see "whether people were victims of their oppression or victors of their oppression."

FUTURE CHANGES
Gustafson would not change much in teaching the class again, perhaps modifying the reading somewhat to stick to primary sources entirely, rather than including the editors' comments introducing the narratives. She may also substitute more formal oral presentations for the informal ones she required in the class. Each student reported on two or three slave narratives found on a Web site at the University of North Carolina called Fugitive Slaves in Canada: Related by Themselves.

CLASS BONDING
The first day Gustafson asked students to write information about themselves on an index card. She asked, "What two things would you want to include if you were telling the story of your life?" On the last day they met, she read the answers to see if the class could guess who wrote them, and they could. Through their interactive class and a Sunday afternoon at Gustafson's home, the twelve had bonded. Purvis said, "The greatest part of the discussions was the fact that we were able to work together as a class and laugh and share our feelings in regards to the narratives. Through this course I've made some great friends!"

by Jill Frey