The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemy of Progress

The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemy of Progress  

January 14th, 2022

5:30 p.m. EST

Free & Virtual Book Talk

In the context of slavery, science is usually associated with slaveholders’ scientific justifications of racism. But abolitionists were equally adept at using scientific ideas to discredit slaveholders. Looking beyond the science of race, The Science of Abolition shows how Black and white scientists and abolitionists drew upon a host of scientific disciplines—from chemistry, botany, and geology, to medicine and technology—to portray slaveholders as the enemies of progress.

Eric Herschthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of Utah. He is the author of The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress (Yale University Press), and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the New Republic, the Washington Post, and the New York Review of Books, among other publications.

Sponsored by the Program in African American History

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