The Ballitore Project is a research project investigating the Ballitore Collection, which is held at UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections. This collaboration between the University of California, Santa Barbara, California State University, Northridge, and Howard University uses archival and computational methods to analyze the collection, while simultaneously introducing students to critical perspectives in the fields of book history, archival studies, and the digital humanities. The Ballitore Collection features more than 2,500 documents related to the Irish Quaker community of Ballitore, Ireland, including letters, journals, notebooks, and dream accounts. Originally assembled by the author Mary Leadbeater (1758-1826), this unique, understudied archive offers important insights into the intersections of gender, race, and religion in this period. The project—with funding from the UC-HBCU Initiative, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies—uses computational techniques to expose the collection’s contents and exclusions, highlighting how women and people of color are often marginalized within a community that claims egalitarianism. We are in the process of digitizing the collection for public access.
Contact: rking@english.ucsb.edu