SEMINAR PROFILE

H30 -
The Ink Will Outlast You: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Can literature change history? In his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Edward P. Jones interrupts the received wisdom about slavery in the United States with the figure of Henry Townsend. Bought out of bondage by his father, Henry devotes himself to purchasing a place in the land of the free. This young, black American becomes a slave owner, a plantation master, and the central figure in a story so unimaginable that it has never been told. We will consider how The Known World reworks the conventions of the Victorian novel and reconstructs the history that haunts us all. What would it mean if Americans understood that slavery is not the tragedy that divided us but, instead, the crime that unites us?

Scholar:

Michael Downing

Location:

Harvard Hillel

Dates:

1/30/2009, 2/6/2009

H30 -	The Ink Will Outlast You: The Known World by Edward P. Jones

	Can literature change history? In his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Edward P. Jones interrupts the received wisdom about slavery in the United States with the figure of Henry Townsend. Bought out of bondage by his father, Henry devotes himself to purchasing a place in the land of the free. This young, black American becomes a slave owner, a plantation master, and the central figure in a story so unimaginable that it has never been told. We will consider how The Known World reworks the conventions of the Victorian novel and reconstructs the history that haunts us all. What would it mean if Americans understood that slavery is not the tragedy that divided us but, instead, the crime that unites us?

		Scholar:	Michael Downing
		Location:	Harvard Hillel
		Dates:	1/30/2009, 2/6/2009