This digital exhibit and its accompanying digital archive showcase materials digitised as part of the ‘Empire of Letters’ collaboration between Megan Robb (University of Pennsylvania) and Sneha Krishnan (University of Oxford). The digitization of the materials and the first stage of metadata creation were funded by the John Fell Fund. The finalization of the metadata, exhibit curation, and the designing of the digital archive related to Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel were funded by the Price Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, Wolf Humanities Center, the Julie and Martin Franklin Assistant Professorship, and the University of Pennsylvania Trustees’ Council for Penn Women.
Elizabeth Sharaf-un-Nisa, the focus of this digital archive, travelled from Kolkata to Devon as the wife of a member of the British elite in the early years of East India Company rule. The journey and life of this woman represents a rare record of imperial encounter between a native woman and the European man with whom she cohabited, and eventually married. The history of women’s mobility through British imperial geographies is a growing and multi-disciplinary field. Outside of critical editions and printed materials, sources for this history are still sparse. The broader research project, entitled “Unstable Archives,” aims to trace materials across multiple languages to track women’s literal travels and figurative journeys through Britain’s imperial networks in South Asia. This archive includes handwritten texts in English, French, Persian, and Hindi/Urdu, alongside meaningful non-textual materials that include textiles, jewelry, furniture, and paintings, employing their own significant technical vocabularies. This project demonstrates how women's histories are central, rather than marginal, to constructions of empire.
Sources such as Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s letters and material belongings are rare in the history of South Asia and as such, networks of mobility and correspondence in women’s lives remain under-studied. These sources are key to emergent historical geographies of imperial formation that account not only for macro-processes occurring in official circles but for individual and embodied experiences that often complicate larger narratives. These materials are held in the UK by family members of these two women and therefore are not available in any public archive. Our project is a pioneering effort to digitise and ingest the digital copies of these materials (physical copies will continue to be held by the families) into the catalogue of the University of Pennsylvania Library Services. While this website will offer a digital exhibit highlighting the riches of this collection, eventually the archive will be hosted permanently on the University of Pennsylvania’s OPenn platform.
We aim to develop best practices for developing digital methods to build a researcher-driven platform archiving multilingual and multimedia materials important to the study of gender in colonial India. This project represents a pioneering attempt to create a born-digital archive streamlined with university library catalogues at the University of Pennsylvania – including materials that are not physically present in these library holdings. In this we have the following goals:
To build legitimacy for ‘non-official’ and everyday materials – particularly those pertaining to women – as historical sources and make them available in publicly-accessible and reputable archival catalogues. This will enrich the range of narratives that currently inform historical geographies and material histories of gender.
To use digital technology to bring into public use materials that hold affective value for families without permanently removing them from their location in family homes. This speaks to a growing debate in the social sciences and humanities on the ethical import of removing objects from the ecologies where they hold meaning, for research in ostensibly neutral environments where they are classified and labelled. Digitising allows us to account for these ‘home ecologies’ where the objects dwell and simultaneously make them available and visible as sources of historical importance to the study of a much under-researched field. The overall goal is to develop an archive that is inclusive and offers a wider range of historical sources that accommodate the significance of gender in colonial contexts.
To generate an understanding of gender in the historical geographies of imperial travel between South Asia and Britain through the perspective of a South Asian woman who migrated to Britain at the beginning of British colonial rule. These letters are indicative of the transnational networks that emerged in the context of imperialism and challenge imaginaries of women – both British and Indian – as static.
To use the digitisation of the collections described above as an opening point from which to develop an application for a larger project that will solicit and digitise further materials pertaining to women’s mobility in the context of Britain’s imperial relationship with South Asia. We hope to cultivate opportunities for multi-institutional collaboration in research and research-led teaching. If you are interested in collaborating in the development of this project, or having one of our team speak at your institution or seminar, please contact us [include hyperlink].
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