Universities Studying Slavery
Collaboration, Research, and Education in Search of More Inclusive Histories
The Universities Studying Slavery (USS) consortium was created in 2016 by UVA both to ensure that UVA's important work would spread beyond Virginia and to respond to calls for guidance from other schools. Today, it includes over one hundred institutions—independent schools, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, regional universities, and large research universities—from across the globe researching their own historical ties to slavery, segregation, and their legacies. Together, these schools are focused on sharing guiding principles and best practices as they engage in research-based educational projects including on human bondage, land dispossession, and more broadly, racism in their histories.
Genesis of USS
In 2015, the University of Virginia President’s Commission on Slavery and the University (PCSU) launched “Virginia’s Colleges and Universities Studying Slavery (VCUSS),” an informal working group dedicated to collaboration between Virginia schools as they examined histories of enslavement. That working group initially included UVA and four other Virginia schools. Within just a few months, six other Virginia schools had joined.
In December 2015, after a teach-in at Georgetown University, UVA decided to expand, renaming VCUSS as “Universities Studying Slavery (USS)” after Georgetown joined. Since 2016, USS has worked to ensure that UVA's important work would spread beyond Virginia, providing guidance to any institution that sought its help. Today, USS now includes over one hundred schools across the globe.
The USS Field of Scholarship
Since Brown University’s 2006 Slavery and Justice Report, an entire field of study has developed. Here, we provide links to scholarly monographs and edited volumes, as well as a host of downloadable institutional research reports, brochures, walking tours, sample class projects, and syllabi.