Beyond the Nation, Traces of Anne Sancho

Abstract:I retrace Anne Sancho's creative life in letters through the legacy of her husband, Ignatius Sancho, and the production history of Paterson Joseph's play, Sancho: An Act of Remembrance. An earlier version of the play features an epilogue centered on Anne, but recent productions replaced the epilogue with a commemoration of her husband's historic vote. I consider the erasure of Anne from productions of Sancho in relation to historical framings centered on nationally-bounded stories of inclusion and bourgeois individualism. Anne's presence-absence unsettles these framings and, at the same time, insists that we confront how the U.S. imperial present conjures the British imperial past.