Contributors and Acknowledgements
Dr. Patrick D. Rasico is a 2019-2021 Andrew W. Mellon Partners for Humanities Education Postdoctoral Fellow at Fisk University focusing on the history of modern Britain and empire in India. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of History at Vanderbilt University in 2019. His research focuses upon the relationships between the processes of empire formation, the production of representations of India by Europeans, and how Britons collected and circulated South Asian artwork and artifacts in South Asia and in London during the latter part of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Rasico’s first article, “Calcutta ‘In These Degenerate Days’: The Daniells’ Visions of Life, Death, and Nabobery in Late Eighteenth-Century British India,” appeared in The Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (The British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) in March, 2019. His second article, “Auctions and the Making of the Nabob in Late Eighteenth-Century Calcutta and London” appeared in The Historical Journal (Cambridge University Press) in 2021. He is presently transforming his dissertation into a scholarly monograph. At Fisk University, Dr. Rasico teaches courses on Modern Asian History, Global British Empire, and World History. He hopes that his contribution to this digital exhibit will shed light on the little-known history of the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ global travels in Australia, New Zealand, India, Burma, and reaches of East Asia during the late nineteenth century.
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I am extremely grateful to many persons for their guidance and assistance throughout the development of this digital exhibit.
At Fisk University, I would like to thank Dr. Brandon Owens, the Director of Library Services at Fisk University's John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, and Dr. Holly Hamby, Associate Professor of English, for encouraging me to pursue this area of research and for all of their invaluable help. I must also thank DeLisa Minor Harris, Special Collections Librarian at Fisk University's John Hope and Aurelia E. Franklin Library, for her suggestions and advice as I sifted through the archives and as I digitized materials. I am also very appreciative of the help provided by Brynna Farris, Library Assistant for Special Collections. Finally, I must also express my gratitude to Dr. Paul Kwami, Professor of Music and Director of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, for his encouragement and for inviting me to deliver my findings in a public forum in February, 2021.
I wish to also extend my gratitude to the scholars, librarians, and archivists at the Auburn Avenue Research Library (Atlanta, Georgia) and the Portage County Historical Society Research Library (Ravenna, Ohio). I must express my great thanks to Christina McVey who very generously shared with me her transcriptions of documents and sent to me images of documents held in archives in Ohio and Detroit, Michigan. I am extremely appreciative of all of your efforts and kindness.
Finally, I must thank the Center for Digital Humanities at Vanderbilt University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mellon Partners in Humanities Education Committee, and, of course, Fisk University.
