I was also co-PI on a Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar, called “Currency and Empire: Power, Race, and the Management of Monetary Systems,” which explored the relationship between monetary systems and imperial power, through deep interdisciplinary engagement. Through this grant, faculty members and graduate students, from many disciplines and across temporal and geographic boundaries, together tried to think about how beginning out stories of imperial formations from the perspective of currency and monetary systems might challenge received wisdoms about both. Check out recordings of our sessions and see our efforts to map archives revealing the connections between currency and empire.
Emma Park 