FALL 2024

SCHC 352

In conjunction with an exhibition in the Irvin Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, this course examines the life and times of an extraordinary individual: Ignatius Sancho. He composed and published music, corresponded with British celebrities, and, by virtue of being a property owner, voted in a general election. Sancho was also born on a slave ship, orphaned after his mother died in childbirth and his father by suicide, and brought to England to work as a domestic servant. Educated and supported by an aristocratic patron, he developed keen literary tastes that, along with moral advice, praise for friendship, and delight in domestic life, appear throughout his letters. Those he wrote to Laurence Sterne, a famous novelist, were published in British newspapers in support of the growing calls to abolish the slave trade, and the posthumous publication of his collected letters in 1782 arguably made him the first Black British writer. Sancho’s life and works, like those of many Black people in England in the 1700s and 1800s, rarely get the attention they deserve, and studying them can change common perceptions of Black people’s active roles in cultural history. Assignments will include frequent short quizzes, exhibit studies, response papers, and a reimagination of the library’s exhibit.