Morehouse College class will teach Black history in the metaverse
Morehouse College in Atlanta will launch a first-of-its-kind course this spring in which Black history is taught entirely through the metaverse.
This spring, Ovell Hamilton, a professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, will guide students through a first-of-its-kind course in which Black history is taught entirely through the metaverse, a virtual 3D space where people can interact with one another using avatars.
During class, students will don virtual reality headsets to see firsthand the brutal reality of enslaved Africans lying in chains on top of one another in a slave ship and see an enslaved person standing on the edge of the vessel, facing the harrowing choice between life in bondage or freedom in death.
“It definitely evokes emotions of sorrow,” said Morehouse sophomore Jerad Evan Young, 41, who is Black and is majoring in cinema, television and emerging media studies. He virtually toured the Underground Railroad and a slave ship in Hamilton’s world history class. “Also, there’s a sense of pride because not everybody made it through the slave trade. You know, you had to really be a strong individual. So, that let me know that my ancestors were strong enough to last that grueling journey across the sea.”
The depiction of a slave ship in the metaverse used in a Morehouse College class.Morehouse CollegeWhen Morehouse College made history by launching its first class in the metaverse last spring, Hamilton was one of 11 professors to teach students using virtual reality technology. Partnering with the VR tech company VictoryXR, Hamilton is creating his first full course in the metaverse on Black history. Through the metaverse, students will be able to experience what it was like attending Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, or see the Little Rock Nine as they entered an all-white high school in Arkansas in 1957. They can also tour a slave ship.
The new course, titled “History of the African Diaspora Since 1800,” falls under the Virtual Reality Project, which uses VR in teaching about Black history while fostering a sense of community. Inspired by “Journey for Civil Rights,” a Black history course Hamilton taught in the spring through VictoryXR separate from the university, his new course will start from the Haitian Revolution leading up to the civil rights movement.
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