SAST Colloquium: Emma Kalb

Emma Kalb, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Emma Kalb is a social and cultural historian whose research centers on themes of slavery, service, gender and sexuality in early modern South Asia. Her first book project, “Eunuch Lives: Gender, Slavery, and Service in Early Modern South Asia,” is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. This book argues that eunuchs were central to the social life of elite households in Mughal South Asia, particularly as mediators of interaction and access to both elite men and women. In doing so it highlights how the proximate roles and enslaved, castrated status of eunuchs marked them as different, allowing for mobility and in some cases for elite incorporation while also making them particularly vulnerable to various forms of violence. She is currently researching a second book project on harem-based networks in eighteenth-century Mughal Delhi. Her published work includes articles in Gender & History, History Compass, Life Writing, and The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.