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FSC English professor heads symposium on 
Harriet Jacobs, 19th century writer and former slave

LAKELAND, Fla. (March 19, 2003) - Dr. Claudia Slate, Florida Southern College English professor, will head the first Harriet Jacobs Symposium to be held April 4-5 in Edenton, N.C., where Jacobs, a writer, abolitionist and reformer, was born a slave in 1813. 

Slate has spent two years planning the symposium and arranged for funding through a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council. The event marks the first time that scholars of history and literature knowledgeable on Jacobs and her work, in particular, and slavery in North Carolina, in general, have met for such a focused endeavor. Humanities scholars, college students, middle and high school teachers and students, and the people of Edenton and Chowan County will be engaged in and encouraged to discuss the historical and literary aspects of Jacobs. 

The story of Jacobs' life, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself," published in 1861 under the pseudonym Linda Brent, helped build Northern sentiment for emancipation during the Civil War and was the only slave narrative to deal so frankly with sexual as well as racial oppression. Literary critic Henry Louis Gates says, "Jacobs's autobiography is one of the major works of Afro-American literature."

Slate, who has been teaching at FSC for 13 years, became interested in African American studies and in the African American struggle for freedom during her childhood in Mississippi. Her father was a New York Times correspondent, and she was with him to observe the beating of non-violent demonstrators in St. Augustine in the summer of 1964. "As an English major in college, I found African American literature rarely assigned," she said. "But by the time I sought my doctorate in the 1980s, concentrating on Southern literature, I focused on several works of African Americans in my dissertation. I came to realize that the study of American literature is not complete without knowledge of the contributions of African American writers."

For more information on the symposium, please contact Slate at 863-680-4342 or cslate@flsouthern.edu. 


About Florida Southern College
Florida Southern is a four-year, private, co-educational liberal arts college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The college offers more than 40 undergraduate majors and a master of business administration degree accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Located in Lakeland, Fla., the college is home to the largest, single-site collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world. 

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