Elsa Mendoza

Elsa Mendoza joined Middlebury College in the fall of 2021 as a faculty member in the History Department within the College of Arts and Sciences. She maintains an office in Axinn Center 328 and teaches a diverse range of history courses focusing on American history, slavery, capitalism, and African American life. Her academic work centers on the historical connections between slavery and higher education institutions, particularly Jesuit colleges across the United States.

Mendoza received her PhD in History from Georgetown University, where her research focused on the complex relationship between religious institutions and slavery. Her scholarly work has been supported by prestigious fellowships including the Fulbright-Garcia Robles foundation, the Cushwa Center for the study of American Catholicism, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, and Harvard University's Warren Center for the Study of American History.

Mendoza's research interests concentrate on the history of slavery in American educational institutions, particularly examining how universities benefited financially from enslaved labor and how this history has been remembered or obscured. She investigates the lives of enslaved people at universities, the financial structures connecting slavery to higher education, and the contemporary implications of these historical connections. Her work bridges traditional historical scholarship with public history and reconciliation efforts.

Her publications reveal a consistent focus on Jesuit slaveholding practices, the financial mechanisms that connected slavery to university development, and the experiences of enslaved people within educational contexts. Mendoza's scholarship demonstrates how religious institutions navigated the moral and economic complexities of slaveholding while building their educational enterprises.

• Fulbright-Garcia Robles fellowship
• Cushwa Center for the study of American Catholicism fellowship
• Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture fellowship
• Harvard University's Warren Center for the Study of American History fellowship

Mendoza actively mentors undergraduate students through courses like HIST 0500 (Special Research Projects), HIST 0600 (History Research Seminar), and senior thesis projects (HIST 0700/0701). She has received grant support for her research from multiple prestigious institutions that recognize the significance of examining slavery's connections to higher education. Her work with the Georgetown Slavery Archive demonstrates her commitment to making historical research accessible to broader publics.

As associate curator of the Georgetown Slavery Archive, Mendoza contributes to a significant digital humanities project that documents the history of slavery at Georgetown University. Her current book projects, including 'Property of the College: Slavery and the Making of Jesuit Education in the United States' (under contract with Cambridge University Press) and 'Enslaving Missions: Economy, Religion, and Slavery in the Americas' (under contract with Brill), represent major scholarly contributions to understanding the relationship between religious missions and slavery in the Americas.