Hollian Wint (Frederick)

Biography

My work spans the Indian Ocean from East Africa to the Indian subcontinent.

The first project took me into archives in Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania, Gujarat and Bombay, as well as London and Washington DC. My teaching interests are similarly broad; I have taught classes on Africa and the Indian Ocean, the history and anthropology of money and debt, global history, and the history of Islam. In both my teaching and research, I explore the intersections of gender, political economy, and material culture, as well as innovative historical methods.

I am currently completing my first book, entitled Mobile Households: The Intimate Economies of Credit Across the Indian Ocean, c. 1860-1964.  Proceeding from close comparative analysis of Arabic, Gujarati, and Swahili documents, the work is a micro-history of regional financial and familial networks through the abolition of slavery and the rise and fall of British imperial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Research for this project received support from the Fulbright Hays, the American Institute for Indian Studies, the NYU-Abu Dhabi Humanities Institute, and the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University.