AML4680 - Spring 2025 - Gaines

This course examines the enduring legacies of plantation economies and cultures in shaping modern global society. We will explore how the plantation system—characterized by forced labor, colonial exploitation, and racialized hierarchies—continues to influence contemporary life through fiction, film, music, and foodways. By tracing connections between past and present, we will investigate how we live with the afterlives of the plantation. We will consider early plantation logics with Toni Morrison and Frederick Douglass, reckon with speculative presents with Octavia Butler, and trace the shadow of the plantation with Jesmyn Ward and Queen Sugar.