china

Communist Prints: Sidenotes to the Asian Women’s Conference of 1949

The paper caught my attention. The pictures slipped into my fingers from the archive file. The paper was fine and strong, with a subtle texture and sheen. It felt as if it were made of silk. Three of the brightly colored woodblock prints shared the same paper. All featured peasant women were reveling in the benefits of communism. The images suffered from mild water damage. This blurred the writing and spread a pink wash of watercolor paint over parts of the image. The stories they tell, however[...]

Three Cyclists from India and Encounters of Empire

 ‘In China, the people did not believe they were Indians, because they were clean-shaven…’ (RGASPI 542/1/5, 68).   The continual mining of the Comintern Archive in Moscow, either by visiting the archive or consulting the online digital archive, furthers our understanding of (as in my case) anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements and experiences in the interwar period. By perceiving these movements as circulations of experience, and, transnational in scope and nature, the documen[...]