This lecture will contextualize Harriet Beecher Stowe and the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, within the debates between Martin Delany and Frederick Douglass. Both African American leaders publicly disagreed on the role of Stowe as an ally, Stowe’s literary depiction of enslaved African Americans, and Stowe as a credible spokesperson for slavery.

We remember Harriet Beecher Stowe as a novelist, but she was also a prolific and influential writer about religious matters. As editor of Stowe’s religious writings for Oxford University Press, Claudia Stokes will examine Stowe’s forgotten religious works and will present Stowe as the first feminist theologian.