Women's Worlds in Qajar Iran

FAIN: PW-51546-14

President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, MA 02138-3800)
Afsaneh Najmabadi (Project Director: July 2013 to November 2016)

The expansion of digital archives and a Web site that make available primary sources related to the social and cultural history of women during the Qajar dynasty (1785-1925) in Iran. This project would expand the resource's coverage of socio-economic classes, ethnicities, and geographic locales.

The WWQI project is a comprehensive digital archive and website that addresses a significant gap in the scholarship related to the Qajar dynasty in Iran by making available writings and other personal documents created by, and reflecting the lives of, women during the Qajar era. To date, the WWQI archive contains 33,000-plus digital facsimiles of primary source materials held by 43 private families and individuals and 10 major archival institutions. New funding will enable the WWQI project to not only increase the volume of its collections, but also to substantially expand the range of socio-economic classes, ethnicities, and geographic locations represented within the WWQI archive. The WWQI project draws upon the Harvard Libraries' robust and stable structure for cataloging, archiving, and maintenance-through-time of digital research collections, thus ensuring long-term access to all materials digitized under the auspices of NEH funding.