Images and Orphans: Seeing Pictures in the Archive
April 26, 4:00-6:00 PM, 19 University Place, Great Room (Ground Floor)
NYU Workshop in Archival Practice
Workshop Leaders:
Tina Campt, Professor of Women’s Studies and Africana Studies at Barnard College
Dan Streible, Associate Professor NYU Cinema Studies; Orphan Film Symposium
Previous workshops this semester have addressed “The Radical Politics of Hidden Archives” and “Black Gotham in/outside the Archive.” Among many other issues, these conversations raised the possibilities of writing “partial” histories by honoring the trace or fragment in the writing process, emphasized the importance of archivists as cultural mediators and editors of context, and questioned the categories of “hidden” and “radical,” ultimately asking whether radical movements die or cease to be radical once they are archived.
With “Images and Orphans: Seeing Pictures in the Archive,” the Workshop brings the series’ aims to the specific terrain of visual media. What types of knowledge do visual media archives produce? What particularities of form, methodology or narrative strategies should guide young scholars as they seek to develop archival acumen in working with the still or moving image? How do current topics like the surge of interest in digital humanities or recent litigation decisions involving Google affect us? In seeking to craft scholarly work using “lost works” of visual media (photographs with partial histories or orphan films), what are the politics of un-hiding?
Leave a Reply