Dr. Emma Kalb

Postdoctoral Researcher and Postdoctoral Representative

Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Niebuhrstr. 5
D-53113 Bonn
ekalb@uni-bonn.de

Member of

Research Area E - Gender (and Intersectionality)

Academic Profile

Research

Emma Kalb is a historian whose research interests center on themes of slavery, service, gender, and sexuality in early modern South Asia. Her current project focuses on eunuch slavery during the Mughal period (1526–1857), arguing for its critical importance for our understanding of elite life in early modern South Asia and the Islamicate world. The project explores how eunuchs were central both to the social life of elite households, particularly as mediators of interaction and access, as well as occasionally high-ranking imperial servitors whose lives speak to the complex incorporation of castrated slaves into the ranks of the Mughal elite.

Education

2012–2020
Ph.D. South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, USA

2010–2012
M.A. South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, USA

2002–2006
B.A. Asian Studies and English Literature, Swarthmore College, USA

Academic Positions

since 2021
Postdoctoral Researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany

2020–2021
Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Claremont McKenna College, USA

Publications

Forthcoming. "In and Out of Sight: Textual Traces of Slavery and the Enslaved in Mughal South Asia." In Concealing Agents: Intentional Processes of Invisibilization in Modern Asian History, edited by Mònica Ginés-Blasi. De Gruyter.
2023. "Slavery in South Asia in the Modern Period." In Palgrave Handbook of Global Slavery throughout History, edited by Damian Pargas and Juliane Schiel.
2023. "A Eunuch at the Threshold: Mediating Access and Intimacy in the Mughal World." In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.
2021. "Framing Gender in Mughal South Asia." In History Compass.