Idle Talk – Dr. Michelle Folk

Please join us on January 16, from 2:30-3:30 pm in room CM105 for our Idle Talk Series.

Living Empire at Home and Abroad: Articulations of Transnational Colonialism in the “Everyday and Ordinary”
Presented by: Dr. Michelle Folk

Dublin’s Dobbs sisters immigrated to the colonies in the 19th century – Harriet Cartwright to Canada and Jane Lawe and Maria Waters to India. Their mother later compiled their correspondence into a letter book for her grandchildren to memorialize their mother Jane and aunt Maria both of whom died in India. Personal correspondence filled with anecdotes, small events, and personal struggles did not just maintain family connections between the metropole and colonies. Through letters, trans-imperial families such as the Dobbs told the story of empire – how they built, maintained, and made sense of it – through sharing the “everyday and ordinary” in their correspondence during the period of British colonialism.