Sarah Chatta ’17

January 2014

Tracing History

Freshman Sarah Chatta ’17, spent the summer of 2014 in India “Tracing History.” She traveled to New Delhi and then to Shimla, the capital city of India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh, two places where she has extended family members that are of her grandmother’s generation. Sarah explored both the significance of Shimla in India’s history and the Indian-Pakistani Partition through listening to oral stories that she gathered through living, breathing resources. She contextualized these personal accounts by delving into university and private archives, and has begun to incorporate her findings into a larger study of modern Indian history. Her presentation in the fall of 2014 included artifacts that she found while visiting her family home, video interviews of firsthand accounts of the Partition, and photos that helped to illuminate the historical context of the event and Sarah’s project.