Dr. Treya Allen presented this talk at the 2024 Destination Imagination Lunch n' Learn. This particular talk emerged from a lesson that she developed with students. Dr. Allen begins by sharing a database with students that documents the complex insurance underwriting of the Middle Passage: Companies insuring ships that will cross the Atlantic Ocean to sell African slaves in the Americas. Each life had a specific value; if that life ended in one way or another on the high seas, slavers could seek out and recover damages. Dr. Allen and students work together to understand and then analyze the data. What is the purpose of insurance in such a situation? What kinds of outcomes and values might such a scheme encourage? Though the conversations are harrowing and difficult, Dr. Allen's students begin to imagine the lives of the people involved in the Middle Passage. A follow-up assignment challenges students to imagine what life is like for those people forced onto a Middle Passage ship. Using data as well as their imaginations, students work through the implications of an insured human trafficking operation.
