Visiting Uncle Tom's Cabin

Fall 2019 Discussion Series 

Harriet Beecher Stowe House's monthly discussion series returns this fall with four all-new sessions. If you've ever been with us before, welcome back! If not, feel free to jump in at any point.

Discussion leader will again be Dr. John Getz (Professor Emeritus, Xavier University), using selections from Uncle Tom’s Cabin to launch discussion of contemporary issues and historic connections.

Suggested short readings are listed below but if you don’t have time to read ahead, we’ll provide handouts for discussion.

The house opens for tours at 6 p.m., and discussions begin at 7 p.m. Discussions are always free and open to the public. Coffee, tea, and light snacks are provided. 

Wednesday, September 4: Harriet's Research
As the school year hits its stride and students begin research projects, we look at sections of two works Harriet researched for the writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Co-led by Chris DeSimio, former Board President, Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House.

• Theodore Dwight Weld and Angelina and Sarah Grimke, American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839).
  • Introduction  https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html#p7
  •  Narrative of Sarah M.Grimke   https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html#p22
  • Testimony of Angelina Grimke Weld   https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html#p52
• Josiah Henson, Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada (1849)
  • Harriet provides a summary in the middle of Chapter VI of _A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin   http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54812/54812-h/54812-h.htm
  • Or for a summary with excerpts search 
    Henson’s 1849 Life—_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ and American Culture
     utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/henson49p.html
    
    

                    
​Wednesday, October 2: The South as Haunted House
In the spirit of Halloween, we look at three authors' haunted houses that can represent the antebellum South: Harriet's description of the St. Clare and Legree plantations, Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher, and George Washington Cable's Poquelin house in the short story "Jean-ah Poquelin." Co-led by Dr. Kristen Renzi, Xavier University, English Department.

• Edgar Allan Poe, "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839)
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Chapters XV and XXXII
• George Washington Cable, "Jean-ah Poquelin" (1875)

​Wednesday, November 6: Indicting the North
If the antebellum South is a house haunted by slavery, the antebellum North is also far from perfect, as both Harriet and Henry David Thoreau show us. We'll study the character Ophelia St. Clare in Uncle Tom's Cabin and Thoreau's essay "Slavery in Massachusetts."

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Chapters XVIII and XIX
• Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" (1854)

​Wednesday, December 4: Merry Christmas...or not!
​RSVP HERE
We'll read a Christmas story by Harriet and contrast it with descriptions of Christmas for enslaved persons by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs.

• Harriet Beecher Stowe, "Christmas; or, The Good Fairy" (1850)
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), the 3 or 4 pages of Chapter X whose first paragraph begins with "My term of actual service to Mr. Edward Covey ended on Christmas Day, 1833." and whose last paragraph ends with "The practice is a very common one."
• Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Chapter XXII

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Past Season Topics
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Spring 2019 - Harriet and _____ - Looking at connections between Uncle Tom's Cabin and larger social and literary movements, including civil disobedience, women writers, plantation literature, and 20th century black authors.

Fall 2018 - Uncle Tom's Cabin from Three Different Angles - Exploring ideas of ghosts and the supernatural, the ideal family, and abolitionionism vs. colonialism as described in Harriet's work.
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Summer 2018 - Civil War Writing by Those who Lived It -  In conjunction with our new temporary exhibit, “To Give It All to this Cause”: The Beecher Family and the Civil War, we host monthly discussions on the literature of the War by authors who lived through it on the battlefield, in hospitals caring for the wounded, and on the home front.

Spring 2018 - Stowe and Friends - Focuses on two important 19th-century figures: Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain. We discuss each man’s personal and literary connections with Harriet Beecher Stowe and the struggle for social justice.

​Fall 2017 - Visiting the Cabin - Ideas found within Beecher Stowe's work, including The Shelby Farm, Maternal Love, "Tom Shows," and the Evolution of Tom from martyr to modern insult.  ​