Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory

Course Description

Jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings on Afrofuturism: “I’ve always been fascinated with the word. I think I first heard about it from John Akomfrah’s documentary “The Last Angel of History.” I watched it and I thought, ‘What does it mean to me?’ I went to a lecture by Kodwo Eshun … and he was talking about Afrofuturism as being a way of poeticising the past. That you recontextualise it and mould it in a way that gives you a power over history. I like that sentiment. It’s essentially this Sun Ra philosophy that I’m really into: the fact that communities that have agency are able to form their own philosophical structures.”

This is a course on conceptualizing and curating digital cultural memory, with a particular focus on the construction of identities and expression of possible worlds, and on power, agency, and liberation in/through the independent “philosophical structures” of community-based archives. Among our animating concerns will be Afrofuturist and speculative digital library interface provocations; indigenous and local knowledges and their relation to nonlinear conceptions of time and “the record;” opportunities for place-based inquiry and understanding through archival collections; issues of sustainability; and problems of surveillance culture, hyper-quantification, and consent. We will also consider the challenges that established memory institutions and professionalized libraries and archives face when working in community. Under what conditions are authentic and equitable partnerships possible? What does good stewardship (or scholarship) mean in a post-custodial and collaborative context? How might digital platforms be better designed to protect their users, foster imagination, and honor local expertise and control? And finally, because this is a Rare Book School course, we’ll pay close attention to the ways that even born-digital and digitally remediated collections are really material culture through and through: expressions of lived experience, deeply embodied and interpenetrating with physical spaces, documents, and artifacts. We’ll take good advantage of our Philadelphia location, making field trips, welcoming guest speakers and participant perspectives, and engaging locally with the work of individual thinkers and culture-makers, independent/community-based projects and zines, established memory institutions, and formal and informal collections and collectives. These include—as a preliminary list—people and projects at the Free Library of Philadelphia (our home base for the course), the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), the John J. Wilcox Jr. Archives at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Monument Lab, Black Quantum Futurism and the Community Futures Lab, Metropolarity, the Mütter Museum and Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia, and the “Chronicling Resistance” project at PACSCL, the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries. Although our focus will be on problems and opportunities in formulating, archiving, and accessing cultural memory in the digital age, there are no technical prerequisites or computer equipment requirements for this course. Participants should be prepared to discuss assigned readings and films, participate in conversations and outings, examine objects critically, and engage creatively with ideas for alternate interfaces to collections through a series of low-tech, collaborative design charrettes. Crayons and sketch paper will be provided. Site visits will be arranged with attention to accessibility. Please contact the instructor with any questions or concerns.

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Advance Reading List

Preliminary Advices

This is a hefty reading list. It is expected that participants will develop some familiarity with the articles, posts, book chapters, and film clips outlined below, but you should not feel that you need to know everything listed here backwards and forwards before the course begins. Feel free to skim longer works. “Core” and “fringe” designations in each section will help you prioritize your prep work for the course—but please be aware that they are not a hierarchy: we will often center the margins and focus daily discussions on whichever readings and media objects most capture the group’s imagination. We’ll also start each morning with a “what did we miss?” from the day before, and reserve time for ideas that emerge as we engage with people and collections on site, for which little preparation is necessary.

Where possible, links below lead to freely available versions. Please contact the instructor if you have difficulty acquiring open access, institutionally licensed, borrowed, or otherwise free-to-you copies of any of the following.

Course Preamble

Core

1. Caswell, Michelle. “’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture, 16:1 (2016).
2. Rosa, Jonathan. Twitter thread by @DrJonathanRosa: “When decolonial perspectives ground your research, they completely transform questions, methods, analyses, modes of representation…”. 12 October 2018. Also available beginning here.
3. Schlesselman-Tarango, Gina. “The Legacy of Lady Bountiful: White Women in the Library.” Library Trends, 64:4 (2016): 667–686.
4. Harris, Verne. “Archons, Aliens, and Angels: Power and Politics in the Archive.” In The Future of Recordkeeping and Archives: A Reader, edited by Jennie Hill, 103–122. London: Facet Publishing, 2010.
5. Duarte, Marisa Elena & Miranda Belarde-Lewis. “Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. 53:5–6 (2015): 677–702.
6. Nowviskie, Bethany. “Five Spectra for Speculative Knowledge Design.” Blog post. 22 April 2017.

Fringe

1. “Identifying and Dismantling White Supremacy in Archives.” (PDF poster). Content produced in Michelle Caswell’s “Archives, Records, and Memory” class, Fall 2016, UCLA. Poster design by Gracen Brilmyer.
2. Dempsey, Lorcan. “Memory institutions redux: pluralizing memories and a stay against forgetting.” Blog post. 7 December 2018.
3. Beiner, Guy. “Memory Too Has a History.” Review of Memory Ireland, vol. 3: The Famine and the Troubles, edited by Oona Frawley. Dublin Review of Books, Issue 106 (December 2018).
4. Rumsey, Abby Smith. “How to Preserve Cultural Memory in the Digital Age.” Huffington Post. 14 June 2016.
5. Welburn, William C. “To “Keep the Past in Lively Memory”: William Carl Bolivar’s Efforts to Preserve African American Cultural Heritage.” Libraries & the Cultural Record, 42:2 (2007): 165–179. (“The contributions of William Carl Bolivar, a Philadelphia African American bibliophile and journalist, are considered…”)

Temporality, Quantification, Surveillance

Core

1. Johnson, Jessica Marie. “Markup Bodies: Black (Life) Studies and Slavery (Death) Studies at the Digital Crossroads.” Social Text 137, 36:4 (December 2018).
2. Yusef Omowale, “We Already Are.” Sustainable Futures. 3 September 2018.
3. Phillips, Rasheedah. “Organize Your Own Temporality: Notes on Self-Determined Temporalities and Radical Futurities in Liberation Movements.” Organize Your Own. Soberscove, 2016.
4. A Blade of Grass. “FIELDWORKS: Black Quantum Futurism.” Short film, 2018.
5. Jules, Bergis et al. “Documenting The Now White Paper: Ethical Considerations for Archiving Social Media Content Generated by Contemporary Social Movements: Challenges, Opportunities, and Recommendations.” April 2018. Summarized by Ed Summers and available in PDF format at: “Documenting the Now Ethics White Paper.” 19 July 2018.

Fringe

1. Drake, Jarrett. “Expanding #ArchivesForBlackLives to Traditional Archival Repositories.” 27 June 2016. (See also “#ArchivesForBlackLives: Building a Community Archives of Police Violence in Cleveland.” 22 April 2016.)
2. Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia. “Statement of Principles.” 9 January 2017. Archives For Black Lives – Archivists responding to Black Lives Matter.
3. Ramirez, Mario H. “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative.” The American Archivist 78:2 (Fall–Winter 2015): 339-356. (This article is a response to Greene, Mark A. “A Critique of Social Justice as an Archival Imperative: What Is It We’re Doing That’s All That Important?.” The American Archivist 76:2 (Fall–Winter 2013): 302–334.
4. Love, Tirhakah. “Dismantling the Master Clock: the philosophy and music of Philadelphia’s Black Quantum Futurism collective.” Red Bull Music Academy Daily. 15 May 2018.
5. Harris, Verne. “The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa.” Archival Science 2 (2002): 63–86.
6. Intro to John Akomfrah’s The Last Angel of History (short film clip, available here: “everywhere, every when” – Bethany Nowviskie.)

Consent and the Right to Be Forgotten

Core

1. The Zine Librarians’ Code of Ethics. (printable PDF version recommended!)
2. Robertson, Tara: “digitization: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Blog post. 20 March 2016 and “update on On Our Backs and Reveal Digital.” Blog post. 15 August 2016.
3. Korenhof, Paulan et al. “Timing the Right to Be Forgotten: A Study into ‘Time’ as a Factor in Deciding About Retention or Erasure of Data.” Working paper, Computers, Privacy and Data Protection Conference 2014.
4. Gomes de Andrade, Norberto Nuno, “Oblivion: The Right to Be Different from Oneself – Reproposing the Right to Be Forgotten.” (2012.) VII International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics. Net Neutrality and other challenges for the future of the Internet, Revista de Internet, Derecho y Política. No. 13: 122–137.
5. Ulinskas, Moriah. “The Terezita Romo Papers: Capturing the Spirit of Collective Action in Archives.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 2:1 (2018): 4.
6. Alpert-Abrams, Hannah. “Post-custodial Archiving for Our Collective Good.” CLIR Re:Thinking. 25 October 2018.
7. Ehrenkrantz, Melanie. “How Archivists Could Stop Deepfakes From Rewriting History.” 16 October 2018.

Fringe

1. “Right to be forgotten.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (accessed January 1, 2019).
2. Wooten, Kelly. “Why We’re Not Digitizing Zines.” Duke University Libraries: Digital Collections. 21 September 2009.
3. “’Moko; or Maori Tattooing’ Project: A Report on Consultation.” New Zealand Electronic Text Centre, 2007.
4. Metropolarity, 2013 ARCHIVE (Pilot Episode, Space Invaders Episode): Journal of Speculative Vision & Critical Liberation Technologies (SE01, EP00-01. (PDF zine for your browsing pleasure; newer zines available for purchase at their website).
5. Valelly, Jonathan. “Zine Philosophy: Metropolarity.” Broken Pencil Magazine. 12 August 2014.
6. Jules, Bergis. “Confronting Our Failure of Care Around the Legacies of Marginalized People in the Archives.” Digital Preservation 2016 keynote; 11 November 2016.

Space, (is the) Place / Mutual Aid, Cultural Memory

Core

1. Liboiron, Max. “Methodologies: How to Read a Landscape.” Discard Studies: Social studies of waste, pollution & externalities. 17 June 2013.
2. Hershey et al. “Mapping Intergenerational Memories (Part I): Proving the Contemporary Truth of the Indigenous Past.” Arizona Legal Studies, Discussion Paper No. 14-01 (January 2014).
3. Mallick, Samip and Michelle Caswell. “Against Precarity: Towards a Community-Based Notion of Fiscal Sustainability.” Sustainable Futures. 30 July 2018.
4. Caswell, Michelle et al. (2016) ““To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing”: Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79:1 (Spring/Summer 2016): 56–81.
5. Big Door Brigade. “What is Mutual Aid?” (accessed January 1, 2019).
6. Hardy, Ann and Gionni di Gravio. “Rock Art as a Contextual Archive: Respecting Cultural and Spiritual Dimensions within a Comprehensive Scientific Approach.” Hunter Living Histories. University of Newcastle, Australia. 8 October 2018.

Fringe

1. Adams, Matt. “Spit Spreads Death: Let’s start here! Researching an interactive artwork.” Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, 12 May 2017.
2. Lum, Ken. “On “Monument Lab”.” Art21 Magazine. 26 January 2018.
3. Bickel, Rachel and Sarah Dupont. “Indigitization.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 2(1) (2018): 11. (It’s also worth glancing through the list of other contributions to “Endangered Knowledge,” the special issue of KULA in which this project report appears.)
4. Sellie et al. “Interference Archive: A Free Space for Social Movement Culture.” Archival Science 4 (2015): 453–472.
5. Hay, Sydney W. “A history of the bicentennial : a scrapbook.” Free Library Catalog. (We’ll examine this in person.)
6. Whitelaw, Mitchell. “Local Kin – a visual explorer for biodiversity data”. (See also Whitelaw’s “Mashups and Matters of Concern: Generative Approaches to Digital Collections.” Open Library of Humanities 4(1) (2019): 26.
7. “Revolution Remix: A South Asian American Sound Tour of Historic Philadelphia.” SAADA grant announcement, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Conclusions: Material Concerns

Core

1. Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12:2 (2008): 1–14.
2. Gilliland, Anne and Michelle Caswell. “Records and their imaginaries: imagining the impossible, making possible the imagined.” Archival Science 16:1 (March 2016): 53–75.
3. Powell, Chaitra et al. “This Black Woman’s Work: Exploring Archival Projects that Embrace the Identity of the Memory Worker.” KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 2(1) (2018): 5.
4. Gracen Brilmyer, “Why Disability Studies for Archives?” UCLA Center for the Study of Women. 13 July 2018.
5. Anasuya Sengupta for Whose Knowledge? “Learning patterns: Centering Marginalised Knowledge.” 1 November 2018. (“In this learning pattern, we offer seven critical questions that we ask ourselves…”)
6. Jackson, Stephen J. “Repair as Transition: Time, Materiality, and Hope.” In Repair Work Ethnographies: Revisiting Breakdown, Relocating Materiality, edited by Ignaz Strebel et al. Palgrave Macmillan: London 2018.

Fringe

1. Free Library of Philadelphia, “Framing Fraktur.” Includes an 8 minute film on Fraktur + contemporary arts inspired by the collection. Please also review “Fraktur Basics,” as we’ll have the opportunity to encounter some examples from the Free Library’s splendid collection in person.
2. Mattson, Rachel. “Can We Center An Ethics of Care in Audiovisual Archival Practice?.” XFR Collective. 2 December 2016.
3. Schoina, Maria, and Andrew Stauffer. “Introduction: The History and Future of the Nineteenth-Century Book.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism  1 (2013): 7–12. (For deeper cuts related to our examination of scrapbooks, zines, place-based work, and remediation, read two essays from this special issue: Michael Macovski’s “Books in Pieces: Granger, History, and the Collection” and Andrew Piper’s “Deleafing: The History and Future of Losing Print.”)
4. Braunstein, Laura et al. “And There Was a Large Number of People”: The Occom Circle Project at the Dartmouth College Library.” In Digital Humanities in the Library: Challenges and Opportunities for Subject Specialists, edited by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy et al, 225–240. Association of College & Research Libraries (2015): 225–240.
5. Aruna, Sanghapali et al. “Our Stories, Our Knowledges”: the full series!.” Whose Knowledge? 11 December 2018. (See especially “Part 2: Transformative Practices for Building Community Knowledges” and “Part 4: How to Ally and Be a Good Guest”).

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Course Evaluations

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Course History