MMUF PhD Duchess Harris Speaks with the Mellon Foundation on NASA and African-American Women's History

March 02, 2018

MMUF PhD Duchess Harris (originally selected as an undergraduate MMUF fellow at the University of Pennsylvania) recently sat down with Mellon Foundation staff to discuss her new book Hidden Human Computers: The Black Women of NASA and her related digital archives project at Macalester College, where she is Professor and Chair of American Studies. Professor Harris has both a scholarly and a family interest in the stories of African-American women at NASA: she is the granddaughter of Miriam Mann, one of the earliest of the "hidden figures" whose collective experiences as pioneering black female NASA mathematicians was the subject of the 2016 Best Picture Oscar nominee Hidden Figures. A video version of the interview can be viewed at https://youtu.be/bSdclpcGUfM.