Stanley M. Elkins is As of 2004 the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of history at Smith College. He was one of the first academics to write about slavery in the United States, examining the effects on the slaves and their descendents. His arguments (which are controversial, and in fact not widely accepted today) are that the process of slavery made the black people relate to the dominate white rather as children relate to their parents. He claimed that the blacks were subjected to totalitarian treatment, and prevented from having their own culture, and that a culture of dependency was created that still existed a century later. He compared blacks in the United States to the Jews who were enslaved by the Nazis in concentration camps, a comparision that was considered inappropriate by many descendents of both groups.

The controversy is discussed by Ann Lane in her book: The Debate Over Slavery, Stanley Elkins and His Critics.

Elkins is the author of the 1959 book: Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life, and (with Eric McKitrick ) the 1993 book: The Age of Federalism, 1788-1800.