114 research outputs found
Hidden Women: uncovering the veil of silence during the partition of Punjab
No full textDr Pippa Virdee of De Montfort University uncovers the hidden voices of Muslim women during the partition of the Punjab, India in 1947. Using first-hand accounts, Dr Virdee reveals how women, often sheltered from private and public spaces, created their own space during this complex and traumatising time.
This talk was part of The National Archives’ Diversity Week, a series of events and activities aimed at promoting equality and diversity in how we work and what we do.http://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/author/dr-pippa-virdee
Pakistan: A Very Short Introduction
No full textWhat is Pakistan? The name refers to a seventy-year-old post-colonial product of the bloodiest partition of territory and population that accompanied the end of British empire in South Asia. But the region of the Indus Valley has a four-thousand-year-old history, and was the site of one of the earliest and greatest riverine civilisations in the world. Although the modern nation of Pakistan as we know it was created as a homeland for the Muslims of British India, it is impossible to understand the complex tapestry of linguistic, ethnic, and cultural identities and tensions of the region without tracing its deep past.
This Very Short Introduction looks at Pakistan as one of the two nation-states of the Indian sub-continent that emerged in 1947. Pippa Virdee reaches into the ancient past to demonstrate the influence of trajectories of human settlement and civilisation on Pakistan's contemporary political arena, and shows how the longer continuities between the land and its peoples are as important as the short-term changes in the political landscape. She considers Pakistan's religion and society, the state and the military, everyday life, popular culture, languages and literature, as well as Pakistan's relationship with the rest of the world. Virdee also looks to the challenges of the 21st century and the future of Pakistan
Partition and the absence of communal violence in Malerkotla
No full textVirdee is an early career researcher who entered the profession after August 2004
Peace photographies:A short introduction
No full textTom Allbeson is Reader in Media and Photographic History at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture (Cardiff University, UK) and co-editor of the Journal of War and Culture Studies. His research concerns media history and visual culture in contemporary Europe with specialisms in photojournalism and conflict, visual culture and reconstruction, collective memory in post-conflict societies, and urban history. He is the author of Photography, Reconstruction and the Cultural History of the Postwar European City (Routledge, 2020) and co-author of Conflicting Images: Histories of War Photography in the News (Routledge, 2024).Pippa Oldfield is Senior Lecturer in Photography at Teesside University, UK, and former Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery, Bradford. She is the author of Photography and War (2019) and has curated numerous exhibitions on the topic of conflict and its aftermath, including Bringing the War Home: Photographic Responses to Recent Conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan and No Man’s Land: Women’s Photographic Viewpoints on the First World War...
Histories and Memories in the Digital Age of Partition Studies
No full textThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Since its 70th anniversary in 2017, a wider public caravan of commemoration led by interested individuals and groups has joined academic studies of India’s Partition. These are more popular among the South Asian Diaspora in the Global North (UK/US), where they are a part of the ‘intellectual decolonization’ agenda. The digital turn in oral history has been a catalyst for this development, in which documentation, production, and consumption are all in digital formats. This essay asks some questions of this growing field, starting with interrogation of its location in the West, away from the partitioned ground and its socio-political realities in the East. The essay retraces the twentieth-century genealogy of oral history and its interaction with Partition Studies prior to the current trends, before commenting upon the place of Partition in Memory Studies. Above all, this essay attempts to question the power dynamics around the ways digital projects excerpt, de-contextualize, and de-politicize oral testimonies, by reducing them to sound bites for wider social and community engagement, in which memory is passively consumed
‘No Home but in Memory’: The Legacies of Colonial Rule in the Punjab
No full textThis chapter explores the legacies of colonial rule in the Punjab and its consequences for those who were uprooted due to Partition. Individual accounts highlight the longevity of the resettlement process, rebuilding homes and lives, which at times went on for ten to fifteen years. Some refugees moved a number of times before finally settling down, this restlessness and loss of their homeland is evident through oral narratives that capture those traumatic years of being perpetually displaced. The chapter then focuses on individuals who chose to leave and resettle in Britain. This is at a time when nationalism and patriotism was at its height in the two new states. What compelled these individuals to migrate to a country that had subjugated their land for over 300 years? And why having already been displaced did they chose to go through that process again
Negotiating the past: Journey through muslim women's experience of partition and resettlement in Pakistan.
No full textWomen and Pakistan International Airlines in Ayub Khan's Pakistan
No full textThe file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article weaves together several unique circumstances that inadvertently created spaces for women to emerge away from the traditional roles of womanhood ascribed to them in Pakistan. It begins by tracing the emergence of the Pakistan International Airlines as a national carrier that provided an essential glue to the two wings of Pakistan. Operating in the backdrop of nascent nationhood, the airline opens an opportunity for the new working women in Pakistan. Based on first-hand accounts provided by former female employees, and supplementing it with official documents, newspaper reports and the advertising used for marketing at the time, it seeks to provide an illuminating insight into the early history of women in Pakistan. While the use of women as markers of modernity and propaganda is not new, here within the context of Cold War and American cultural diplomacy, the ‘modernist’ vision of the Ayub-era in Pakistan (1958–1969), and its accompanying jet-age provide a unique lens through which to explore the changing role of women. The article showcases a different approach to understanding the so-called ‘golden age’ of Pakistani history: a neglected area of the international history on Pakistan, which is far too often one-dimensional
Felon Disenfranchisement and the History of Women’s Voting Rights
No full textPippa Holloway is the Douglas Southall Freeman Chair in History at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship (2014) and Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia, 1920–1945 (2006). She is also the editor of Other Souths: Diversity and Difference in the U.S. South, Reconstruction to Present (2008). Her research on felon disfranchisement was supported, in part, by a Soros Justice Fellowship from the Open Society Foundations. She teaches courses in U.S. history, focusing on southern history, incarceration, LGBT history, and historical research methods. Her current research examines the right of those charged with crimes or convicted of felonies to testify in court.
This event was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for the Humanities, and the Suffrage Centennial Committee
Elizabeth Beachbard (c.1822–1861): America’s First Woman War Photographer?
No full textDr. Pippa Oldfield, Senior Lecturer in Photography, Teesside University, United Kingdom
Elizabeth Beachbard (c.1822–1861): America’s First Woman War Photographer?
The history of war photography has been dominated by men. Feminist photo historians have challenged this view, bringing to light outstanding women such as Gerda Taro in the Spanish Civil War and Lee Miller in the Second World War. Miller’s and Taro’s frontline photojournalism fits the masculinist canon of “authentic” war photography, but this mode has excluded most women. What happens if we go beyond the limits of the genre? Who else might come into view?
In this paper, I present the first dedicated research into Elizabeth Beachbard, a forgotten photographer who worked in Louisiana during the American Civil War (1861–1865). I chart her trajectory from an ambrotype portrait studio in New Orleans to a makeshift cabin in a military camp in rural Louisiana, where she photographed Confederate soldiers during the summer of 1861. It\u27s a tale of twists and turns, including court cases, bigamy, a measles epidemic, and a devastating fire. One of my biggest finds is new evidence for an ambrotype hitherto unattributed to Beachbard, which constitutes only the third surviving example of her work.
While questions of gender are central to my paper, I shall not be arguing for essentialist notions of “feminine” photography. Instead, I highlight the gendered constraints of the epoch showing how Beachbard navigated social, political, economic and legal structures. It is ironic that portraiture, one of the few professions open to “respectable” women, was how Beachbard entered the masculine territory of a wartime army camp.
Elizabeth Beachbard could not be considered a war photographer in the conventional sense. Nonetheless, she worked in a military arena, made pictures of soldiers in wartime, and lost her life in the activity. She should be seen as a pioneering figure in the history of women’s photography: perhaps, even, as America’s first woman war photographer.
Dr. Pippa Oldfield is a curator and photo-historian with research specialisms in photography, gender and conflict. She is Senior Lecturer in Photography at Teesside University, UK, and former Head of Programme at Impressions Gallery, one of the UK’s leading photography spaces. Pippa has curated numerous touring exhibitions including ‘No Man’s Land: Women’s Photography and the First World War’ (2017-2019). She is the author of Photography and War (Reaktion 2019) and is currently working on her new monograph, Ungentle Camera: War and Women’s Photography for University of Texas Press
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