This prompt of this paper was to pick a recurring theme in our course that we found interesting and explore it using literary critiques, literature read in class, and other scholarly sources that we found relevant to the topic. I chose to explore the commodification of slaves and agreed with Nicholas Rinehart, an English professor at Harvard, to reject the commonly-accepted Marxist definition of commodity. Instead, using examples from Obi, or, The History of the Three-Fingered Jack by William Earle Jr. and The Grateful Negro by Maria Edgeworth, I further elaborate why historians and scholars should analyze slavery in context of how slaves, facing treatment that challenged their humanity and their survival skills, were in fact treated as humans and how Kopytoff’s theory of commodity-as-process most comprehensively explains the varied treatments of slaves across space and time.
I chose this as my most challenging piece because this essay required the most amount of research and time to put together my ideas into a narrative that could adequately explain why I did not agree with most scholars and with how slave history had traditionally been taught. I had to let go of my previous assumptions on slavery to justify my new ideas that I believe are more inclusive and less obscure, characteristics that are integral to understanding slavery and its lasting impacts today.