PRESENTATIONS: Layne, Peggy, Alonso, Aarati
READINGS
- Harrison Cole and Zachary Griffith, “Images, Silences, and the Archival Record: An Interview with Michelle Caswell,” disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory 26 (July 2018): 21-7 – or, if you’ve got a bit more time, and you’d like more context on the “ethics of care” and feminist philosophy underlying these archival practices, see instead: Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives,” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43.
- On indigenous archiving: Kimberly Christen, “Tribal Archives, Traditional Knowledge, and Local Contexts: Why the ‘s’ Matters,” Western Archives 6:1 (2015): 1-19 [focus on 1-8] + explore Mukurtu, an open-access platform for storing and managing indigenous communities’ cultural heritage.
- On documenting resistance movements: Evan Hill, “Silicon Valley Can’t Be Trusted With Our History,” BuzzFeed (April 29, 2018).
- On creating collections that embody the values of communities of color: Bergis Jules, Simone Browne, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Doreen St. Félix, “Failures of Care” Panel, Digital Social Memory: Ethics, Privacy, and Representation in Digital Preservation conference, The New Museum, February 4, 2017 {video} (1:08). Consider the politics of invisibility, erasure, and the choice not to be documented and archived — themes Robertson addressed last week, too. I recommend that you look up each of these panelists; it’s a formidable group.
Optional: Other Case Studies:
- On highlighting absences and erasures in data collection: Mimi Onuoha, “Missing Data Sets” @ Github + “How We Became Machine Readable,” Eyeo Festival, Minneapolis, MN, 2017 [21:05 > 28:32, 31:33 > 33:03]
- On archiving Australia’s non-white residents: Tim Sherratt, “A Map and Some Pins: Open Data and Unlimited Horizons,” discontents [blog post] (June 11, 2013) + see Tim’s research notebook.
- On feminist activism in archives and libraries: Kate Eichhorn, Interview with Hope Leman, Critical Margins (January 1, 2014).
- On adapting technical protocols to honor linguistic and cultural difference: Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez, “Invisible Defaults and Perceived Limitations: Processing the Juan Gelman Files,” On Archivy (October 30, 2016).
- On processing the Guatemalan National Police Historical Archive: Hannah Alpert-Abrams, “21 Years of Peace, 21 Million Documents,” Tex Libris (January 25, 2018).
- On activist archivists and rogue librarians: The Kitchen Sisters’ The Keepers series on NPR.
- Highly Recommended for Your Winter Break: Tina M. Campt, Listening to Images (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017) [on listening for the unspoken – for fears and aspirations and hints toward self-definition – in quotidian and administrative archival photos from the Black Diaspora]. Here’s the intro.
SUPPLEMENTAL RESOURCES
Archivists Against History Repeating Itself; See the work of Michelle Caswell, including Michelle Caswell & Marika Cifor, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives,” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016); Marika Cifor, “Affecting Relations: Introducing Affect Theory to Archival Discourse,” Archival Science 16:1 (March 2016): 7-31; Kate Eichhorn, The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013); Anne J. Gilliland and Michelle Caswell, “Records and Their Imaginaries: Imagining the Impossible, Making Possible the Imagined,” Archival Science 16:1 (2016): 53-75; Gayatri Gopinath, “Archive, Affect, Everyday: Queer Diasporic Re-Visions” In Political Emotions, ed. by Janet Staiger, Ann Cvetkovich, and Ann Morris Reynolds (New York: Routledge, 2010): 165-92; Verne Harris, “The Hospitable Archivist” Volume 15 “Destination Library” (2008): 96-9 [all of Harris’s work is valuable]; IMLS, “Mukurtu Software Preserves Indigenous Digital Heritage Through Technologies of Today,” IMLS Project Profiles (November 16, 2015); Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies; Bergis Jules, “Confronting Our Failure of Care Around the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives,” On Archivy (November 11, 2016); Bess Sadler and Chris Bourg, “Feminism and the Future of Library Discovery,” code 4 lib (April 15, 2015).
ACKNOWLEDGING AND REDRESSING ABSENCE AND ERASURE: Paul Benzon and Sarah Sweeney, eds., “The Aesthetics of Erasure” Special Issue of Media-N 11:1 (Spring 2015); Michelle Caswell, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014); *Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe 12:2 (June 2008): 1-14; Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, “Filling in the Gaps: Using Outreach Efforts to Acquire Documentation on the Black Campus Movement, 1965-1972,” Archival Issues 36:1 (2014): 27-42; Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, “Moving Toward a Reparative Archive: A Roadmap for a Holistic Approach to Disrupting Homogenous Histories in Academic Repositories and Creating Inclusive Spaces for Marginalized Voices,” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 5:6: (2018); Benjamin C. Hutchens, “Techniques of Forgetting? Hypo-Amnesic History and the An-Archive” SubStance 36: 2 (2007): 37-55; Lauren F. Klein, “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings,” American Literature 85:4 (2013): 661-88; Mimi Onuoha, “Machine Learning Is Being Used to Uncover the Mass Graves of Mexico’s Missing,” Quartz (April 19, 2017); Thomas Padilla, “Engaging Absence,” Thomas Padilla (February 26, 2018); *Kirsten Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014); Pamela Yates, Paco de Onis, and Peter Kinoy, Granito (2012) [film].
COMMUNITY ARCHIVING: Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez, “’To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives,” The American Archivist 79 (Spring/Summer 2016): 56-81; *Michelle Caswell, Christopher Harter, and Bergis Jules, “Diversifying the Digital Historical Record: Integrating Community Archives in National Strategies for Access to Digital Cultural Heritage,” d-Lib Magazine 23:5/6 (May/June 2017); Terry Cook, “Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community: Four Shifting Archival Paradigms,” Archival Science 13:2/3 (2013): 95-120; Abigail De Kosnik, Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016); Bruce Lazorchak, “Ian MacKaye and Citizen Archiving,” The Signal: Digital Preservation (Library of Congress blog) (May 8, 2013); **State Crime 7:1 (Spring 2018) [on Mosireen, the Syrian Archive, etc.); Lauren Tilton and Grace Elizabeth Hale, “Participatory Archives,” Archive Journal (August 2017). LOCAL RESOURCES: CUNY Center for Humanities “Community Archives” research group; Interference Archive; Lesbian Herstory Archives
LIBRARIES’ RESISTANCE: Jarrett M. Drake, “How Libraries Can Trump the Trend to Make America Hate Again,” On Archivy (April 4, 2017); Shannon Mattern, “Public In/Formation,” Places Journal (November 2016).