This case study was developed for a lower-division lecture class
on “World History 1400-1870” with the goal of creating an
opportunity for students to “discover” gender. We used a central
primary source, “The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave
Related by Herself.”1 This first-person account was written by
British abolitionists and disseminated through the London
Society for the Abolition of Slavery in 1831. We chose “The
History of Mary Prince” because the types of labor that Prince
performed as a slave cover the three areas of slave work that we
specifically ask students to explore: plantation work;
housework; and work for other slaves. We departed from the
traditional lecture format and pursued a pedagogical method
known as “problem-based learning” (PBL). PBL takes a particular
“problem” (instead of the more conventional “topic”) as its
point of departure, and asks students to generate a collective
“solution” by working in research teams. Students develop the
skills and acquire the content knowledg