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Legacy 18.1 (2001) 111-112



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Book Review

Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin


Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Edited by Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco. New York: MLA, 2000. 240 pp. $37.00/$18.00 paper

If the Modern Language Association's diverse and prevalent "Approaches to Teaching" series defines the canon of popular and teachable texts, then Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin now finds a secure place in the classroom, complementing its valued place in feminist scholarship. Feminist critics lamented the fact that in the 1970s Uncle Tom's Cabin was not taught in American literature courses; now it is widely included on a vast array of syllabi. This new volume serves a much needed purpose: it clarifies the numerous editions and choices in teaching Uncle Tom's Cabin and offers essays intended to assist scholars and teachers in analyzing the novel.

As with all volumes in the "Approaches to Teaching" series, this one has a two-part structure. The first part, "Materials," provides a solid foundation for surveying the territory. The section "Classroom Texts" gives an overview of some of the editions available. The "Biographical Works" section lists other useful volumes besides the indispensible biography by Joan Hedrick. In "General Studies of Stowe and Her Times" and "Critical Commentary on Uncle Tom's Cabin," the editors provide a generous and comprehensive appraisal of many scholars' work on the novel. The most innovative section is "Visual, Sound, and Internet Resources," which lists websites, films, videos, and other sources that can complement classroom discussion of the text.

The second part of Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin divides usefully into three categories: "Uncle Tom's Cabin in Context," "Controversy and Debate," and "Critical Approaches to the Novel." This tripartite division allows the contributors to demonstrate the ways the novel participates in and informs popular culture and politics, yet also to highlight the debate surrounding the novel's depiction of race and slavery.

In the opening essay, editor Susan Belasco addresses the historical context of Stowe's composition of Uncle Tom's Cabin, arguing that "[h]elping students understand Stowe's central [End Page 111] position in the literary marketplace of the nineteenth-century [sic], as well as the rich historical, political, social, and literary context of the novel, is a useful first step toward meaningful discussion of the complex moral questions that it so effectively raises" (21-22). This wide- ranging essay effectively sets the tone for the subsequent five essays. For example, Susan Nuernburg examines controversial fictional representations of race. Some of the usual suspects appear: Catharine Beecher and Lydia Maria Child's domestic works figure prominently in Lisa Logan's insightful essay, which models useful ways of posing questions to students about the text's reliance on the cult of true womanhood. Because the religious aspect of Uncle Tom's Cabin is so central, Stephen R. Yarbrough and Sylvan Allan study Stowe's religious rhetoric to show how she is both reactionary and radical in her goal to save black and white souls. Editor Elizabeth Ammons's essay teaches strategies for understanding colonization and imperialism in relation to Stowe and her novel, while Paul C. Gutjahr shows us that the novel's manufacture and marketing influence how we read it.

The second part, "Controversy and Debate," develops a more sustained analysis of the questions of race, class, and gender that inevitably arise when teaching the novel. Particularly useful is Gillian Brown's revision of Jane Tompkins's familiar essay on sentimental power; Brown addresses "the racist features of Stowe's sentimentalism that the notion of sentimental power elides as it elaborates the reformist properties of women" (111). Two contributors compare Stowe's novel to Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Sophia Cantave addresses issues of appropriation, while Kristin Herzog evaluates both works' use of violence. David Leverenz walks us through his classroom tactics for teaching the novel's opposing tensions of race, class, and gender, while Mary Jane Peterson...

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