Records of Relinquishment Caregiving and Emotion in the Philanthropy Archive

Abstract

This article focuses on the archive of the Washington Female Orphan Asylum, founded in 1815, and places the study of philanthropy in conversation with scholarship on the archive in histories of slavery, colonization, and trauma. It argues, first, that philanthropic and reform institutions such as the asylum were domestic sites of empire and that their archives reveal the reach of statecraft into the intimate lives of women and families. The article explores, second, the role of emotion in archival research, which can highlight an archive's construction and its silences. The relinquishments within the asylum's records provoke emotion; as fragmentary evidence, they testify to trauma and demand the historian's care.

Department(s)

Language, Cultures and Religions

Document Type

Article

DOI

10.1525/tph.2024.46.2.79

Keywords

archives, caregiving, DC, emotion, material culture, orphan asylum, philanthropy, Washington

Publication Date

5-1-2024

Journal Title

Public Historian

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