Nathan Bick

  Beloved was the next selection for my tour of American literature and candidates for the Great American novel.  Beloved takes place primarily in Reconstruction Ohio just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a former slave state. In an out-of-the-way house near Cincinnati lives a freed Black family centered around Sethe, who lives with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and her children, most notably her daughter Denver. As the story begins, we see that the family is not a happy one. Baby Suggs lies in her deathbed simply seeking out vivid colors. Denver is quiet, doesn’t attend school, and spends her time playing in the land around the house, including by the nearby river. Sethe works during the day as a cook and takes care of the household. The house itself is as lively a member of this unhappy family as any of the humans - it is known to be violent, to shake, to make its presence known. It is said to be haunted, and the family is almost entirely shunned by the rest of the Blac...

Background This fall of 2023 I listened to the lectures of one course from Yale University’s Open Yale Courses (OYC) curriculum called The Early Middle Ages, 264-1000 ( The Early Middle Ages, 284–1000 | Open Yale Courses ), or HIST 210. I began this course because Nicole is taking classes at Harvard for her MPH and I am now done with my statistics masters from Georgetown. The inspiration of her coursework coupled with my newly plentiful free time led me to want to listen to some lectures again.  This course covers the “Early Middle Ages” or “Late Antiquity” period. I was first exposed to this topic from the lectures of Thersites the Historian in his YouTube playlist for the HIS 2202 Introduction to Medieval History course during the early pandemic times. I found it highly interesting because this history seemed very important and yet largely obscure. In conventional history education, different successive areas of the world, narratives, and time periods come to center stage, leav...