Shadow Scholars: A Black Woman’s Archive of Dominican Society is an open-access platform and digital collection of archival documents, scholarly introductions, biographical sketches, interactive maps, and classroom resources about African and African descendant women thinkers across the long historical milieu of Dominican society.

The purpose of this collection is to make available a repository of resources that trace the intellectualism of Black women who were rarely literate yet authored enduring legacies in circum-Caribbean spaces. The platform crafts a genealogy of how organic intellectuals in the first colony of the Americas resisted, accommodated, and endured during the colonial period (1492-1844). From the La Negra del Hospital (circa 1502), the first recorded Black woman of the Americas, to Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley (1793-1870), one of the largest property owners of the Haitian-Dominican unification era, users will gain access to primary source materials, translations, and critical commentaries that position these women within larger currents of Caribbean social and political thought. Shadow Scholars asks users to expand what constitutes intellectualism in Caribbean history? It shows us how digital resources help us better accredit Caribbean actors for the rich intellectual production that abounded beyond the realm of letters. The platform is currently under development with support from the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective.