Mitra Sharafi’s current research is a book project: Parsing Law: Zoroastrians and Litigation in Colonial South Asia, examining how the Parsi community used the colonial courts (such as related to matrimonial law) and the history of Parsi lawyers as intellectual and cultural “middlemen.” Some interesting sources used were the magazine “Hindi Punch,” the “India Office” archive in the BL, and “The Bombay High Court” in Mumbai. There are few private papers of lawyers and judges, and newspapers are in poor condition.
In her teaching, Mitra Sharafi likes to use visual representations of information (like mnemonics). She uses the Times digital archive in an assignment for her classes for undergrads, asking them to pick a particular phenomenon or event related to colonial law and find three articles. These are used in a primary source paper. Originally they had the option to use more sources, but she found that their skills were inadequate so it was too difficult (perhaps hindering the learning). She also brings some front pages from the times into the class. The Legal Studies program sets out to do something very different than what law school does, incorporating cultural sources, social sciences, and humanities. They are also working to incorporate a more global focus to the program. She likes to use primary sources that are accessible (i.e. digitized). Last year she gave them the option of going to rare books, and only a few did it. Google books is beginning to do amazing things in digitizing primary sources.
I would like to get a copy of the primary sources assignment, either from Mitra Sharafi or from the library liaison, Mary Rader. This seems like an important model for meaningful research assignments for undergraduates because it gets away from the print/good vs. online/bad dichotomy.
