MIT course

MIT and Slavery – 21H.S01 (Fall) & 21H.S02 (Spring)

For more than a decade, elite universities and colleges in the Americas and Europe have been examining their historical relationships to the Atlantic slave trade and human slavery. MIT and Slavery is an undergraduate research course on the founding and development of the Institute.

During the fall semester, students will research the origins of MIT and explore the role that the slave trade and human slavery played in the development of scientific and engineering institutions in the Atlantic World. During the spring semester, students will prepare the findings of the fall semester for publication, doing additional research, searching for images, and editing.

Student projects will inform an evolving history of MIT and Slavery, and qualifying projects will be published online by the MIT Libraries at the end of the spring semester.