Since the election of President Barack Obama, many pundits have declared that we are living in a "post-racial America," a culture where the legacy of slavery has been erased. The new essays in this collection, however, point to a resurgence of the theme of slavery in American cultural artifacts from the late twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Ranging from disciplines as diverse as African American studies, film and television, architectural studies, and science fiction, the essays provide a provocative look into how and why slavery continues to recur as a trope in American popular culture.

By exploring how authors, filmmakers, historians, and others engage and challenge the narrative of American slavery, this volume invites further study of slavery in its contemporary forms of human trafficking and forced labor and challenges the misconception that slavery is an event of the past.