Dr. Emma Kalb
Postdoctoral Researcher and Postdoctoral Representative
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Heussallee 18-25
D-53113 Bonn
ekalb@uni-bonn.de
Academic Profile
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.
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
2021–present
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
“Framing Gender in Mughal South Asia,” forthcoming in History Compass.