L-115. Community Archives and Digital Cultural Memory - 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”).