Works in Progress Seminar Series, Semester 2

Our Seminar series returns, with a look at new research being done by PhD students.

• 11th April 3-4 pm GMT. Tiéphaine Thomason (University of Cambridge) Urban Multilingualism, Speech, Public Reading Practices in Eighteenth-Century Martinique.
• 18th April 3-4 pm GMT Chandini Jaswal (Panjab University) Panāh-i Din Daran: The Story of the Forgotten Mughal Capital Dīnpanāh.
• 25th April 3-4 pm GMT Holly Bamford (University of Liverpool) Animals in Witchcraft.
• 9th May 3-4 pm GMT Sophia Lambert (University of Leeds) The Burial Practices and Topography of the Reform Jewish section of Bradford’s Scholemoor Cemetery, 1877-1935.

Friday 11th April 3-4 pm GMT Tiéphaine Thomason (University of Cambridge) Urban Multilingualism, Speech, Public Reading Practices in Eighteenth-Century Martinique

Reconstructing the early eighteenth-century ‘speechscape’ of Atlantic port cities, especially in spaces under French colonial rule in the Caribbean, such as Martinique, remains a difficult task due to the dearth of sources providing direct speech. Language and multilingualism remain, however, a pressing matter when discussing these colonial spaces. If the language of the law was standard French, islands such as Martinique were part of an ‘inter-imperial microregion’, home to various West African and European tongues, as well as to emerging languages such as Martinican Créole. This chapter responds to Sara E. Johnson’s call to revisit the status of standard French in colonial spaces and to John Gallagher’s call for historians to consider the role of speechscapes in the social construction of early modern cities. It seeks to do so by looking at practices of urban public reading and public declamation. Focusing on the town of St Pierre, the chapter considers instances of multilingual speech in seditious posters and revolts, interpretative practices, as well as francophone speech deployed in instances of public punishment.

Friday 18th April 3-4 pm GMT Chandini Jaswal (Panjab University) Panāh-i Din Daran: The Story of the Forgotten Mughal Capital Dīnpanāh.

.“نہ تھا شہر .......

.....فقط اب تو اجڑا دیار ہے....”

“Delhi was never just a city….now only a ruined waste remains"

-Bahadur Shah Zafar, the Last Mughal Emperor, on the destruction of Delhi in 1857

While Shahjahanabad, built in late seventeenth century, has dominated Delhi's Mughal history for a long time — in reality, Delhi had caught the Mughal eye almost a century prior: under the oft-ignored second Mughal Emperor, Humayun. Humayun had built his dream city, Dīnpanāh, the 'Refuge of Religion,' here in 1533. Although much of the capital is lost—remnants like the Purana Qila and Sher Mandal have survived. Stylistic similarities reveal that Dīnpanāh was the unacknowledged inspiration for iconic monuments including Shahjahanabad and Fatehpur Sikri. By delving into its architectural, political, and cultural history, this research emphasises how even in anonymity, Dīnpanāh, the forgotten capital, became a testament to Delhi's rich architectural legacy and resilience through the ages.

Friday 25th April 3-4 pm GMT Holly Bamford (University of Liverpool) Animals in Witchcraft

From the demonic familiar, to bewitched cattle, animals are a fixture of early modern witchcraft beliefs. This paper explores the variety of depictions of animals in English witchcraft cases. Metamorphosis into animals is well recorded, with many witches confessing that they changed into dogs, cats, and birds. From the infamous Vinegar Tom to John Bysack’s snails, this paper will also discuss the various types of animals that serve as the witch’s familiar. It will also discuss animals as victims of bewitchment. In many cases accusations stem from the poisoning or theft of livestock. This paper offers an exploration into the various depictions of animals in English witchcraft cases.

Friday 9th May 3-4 pm GMT Sophia Lambert (University of Leeds) The Burial Practices and Topography of the Reform Jewish section of Bradford’s Scholemoor Cemetery, 1877-1935

While adults and children’s burial practices in Victorian and Edwardian Britain have received substantial attention from academics, apart from Sharman Kadish and Philip Sapiro, the changes in modern Anglo-Jewish burial practices have been largely overlooked. Instead, studies of Jewish human remains primarily focus on burial grounds on the Continent. Therefore, this chapter examines the changes and continuities in the burial practices of Bradford’s Reform Jewish community’s adults, children and infants. By conducting case studies of individuals, it explores how age and social class impacted the community’s burial patterns, and the types of identities the Bradford Jewry constructed through their choice of burial, as well as those identities that were imposed on them by the cemetery trustees.

This chapter uses spatial history to conduct a detailed comparative analysis of the Reform Jewish and non-Jewish sections of Scholemoor Cemetery and other local non-Jewish cemeteries. In doing so, this study investigates how far the community adopted the internment practices of the time, such as the family grave. Digital mapping technology (Google Earth) provides an illustrative tool whereby each grave is plotted on a colour-coded map to visualise the spatial arrangements of the graves.

This chapter reaches several conclusions. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Bradford Reform Jewish Cemetery was a hierarchical landscape that deviated from the Jewish belief that everyone is equal in death. The Jewish cemetery’s secretary and the rest of the trustees were relatively flexible and pragmatic in their approach to burial practices. Several case studies demonstrate that families, including those who died in the workhouse, had some degree of agency over their burial location. However, individual circumstances occasionally led to the secretary arranging burial in a common unmarked grave.