Abolitionist Women and Their Worlds (2025)
In 2025, Tiya and teaching fellow Ciara Williams re-imagined this course; centering Louisa May Alcott’s abolitionist work in this broader context. After reading works by abolitionist women of many different racial and geographic backgrounds, students in the course set out to create a podcast based on primary and secondary source research, to create a historical narrative of Alcott’s relationship with the abolitionist movement in Concord and beyond. This podcast episode provides an understanding of how Louisa’s activism was distinctly shaped by her historical and geographic contexts.
Produced in partnership with “Let Genius Burn,” the podcast episode, Louisa and Abolition, is available anywhere that you listen to podcasts.
Louisa and Abolition
An episode by the students of History 160 at Harvard University
Join us as we explore Louisa May Alcott in the broader context of Concord’s abolitionist movement, including her family’s activism, her interaction with fellow abolitionists, and the importance of Black abolitionist women in shaping the cause that she so passionately devoted herself to.
