[Editor’s note: We have invited our student assistants to share their perspective on working with the material and on the digital project. Thankfully, they said yes! First up: Arunima Kundu, who joined us in September 2020.]
Working on the Archival Gossip Collection: Memories, Moments, and Favourite Items
Hello, my name is Arunima Kundu and I worked as a student assistant in the DFG project “Economics and Epistemology of Gossip in US-American Literature and Culture from the 19th and Early 20th centuries” and was, as a part of it, engaged in editing, uploading and transcribing archival material in the digital collection here on ArchivalGossip.com.
One of my very first tasks was to upload letters written to and by nineteenth century American actress Charlotte Cushman, the ‘protagonist’ of this digital collection. It was fascinating, working with these letters; I got to read, upload and describe a wide variety of personal, formal and semi-formal letters, varied in tone, content and purpose: ranging from intimate personal letters between family and lovers, artists connecting with artists, broadening their network in a nineteenth-century version of LinkedIn and the occasional fan letter to Charlotte Cushman that is bordering on obsession. I also added a series of newspaper articles that were broadly press coverage on Charlotte Cushman, including reviews of her performances in English theatres, reports on her tours and travels and rumours surrounding her.
