Description
Book SynopsisWhat would it mean to unsettle the archives? How can we better see the wounded and wounding places and histories that produce absence and silence in the name of progress and knowledge?
Unsettling Archival Research sets out to answer these urgent questions and more, with essays that chart a more just path for archival work.
Trade Review“This book brings together an exceptionally powerful collection of essays dedicated to revealing and amending the epistemic erasures of imperial archives. Chapters present alternatives to concepts often taken for granted in archival research, they reckon with archival methodologies, and they illustrate pluriversal archival efforts and pedagogies. Important and timely,
Unsettling Archival Research promises to have lasting impact on rhetoric and writing studies.”—Ellen Cushman, author of
The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance “My approach to archival work is significantly changed after this invigorating read. This collection succeeds in unsettling archives and researchers in the best ways: sharing critiques and tough questions of the field while also providing a toolkit for navigating the disruption in archives and with archivists and students. Blending a range of theories with rich and varied archival examples and classroom practices, both emerging and experienced scholars upend disciplinary knowledge and Western assumptions of neutrality, memory, and history.”—Charlotte Hogg, coeditor of
Persuasive Acts: Women’s Rhetorics in the Twenty-First Century “This carefully constructed collection offers a welcome next step in complicating our understanding of what constitutes both archive and archival research through diverse case studies and theoretical contributions drawing on antiracist, decolonial, feminist, indigenous, and queer theories and methods.
Unsettling Archival Research will assist both emerging and experienced researchers to develop more inclusive and self-reflective practices.”—David Gold, author of
Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947 “Comprised of fifteen seminal contributions of original research and experiential insight/experience,
Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives is especially recommended as a core addition for personal, professional, community, and academic library collections and studies lists for Library/Information Science, Library Management, and General Library Information Science collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.”— James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief,
Midwest Book Review's
Library BookwatchTable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction—Romeo GarcÍa, Gesa E. Kirsch, Walker P. Smith, and Caitlin Burns Allen
- Part One. Unsettling Key Concepts
- 1. Unsettling the “Archive Story”—Jean Bessette
- 2. Rescuing the Archive from What?—Wendy Hayden
- 3. Narratives of Triumph: A Case Study of the Polio Archive—Jackie M. James
- 4. Nostalgia in the Archives: Using Nostalgia as a Tool for Negotiating Ideological Tensions—Kalyn Prince
- 5. A Matter of Order: The Power of Provenance in the Mercury Collection of Marion Lamm—Kathryn Manis and Patty Wilde
- Part Two. Unsettling Research, Theory, and Methodology
- 6. Hidden in Plain Sight: Rescuing the Archives from Disciplinarity—LynÉe Lewis Gaillet and Jessica A. Rose
- 7. (En)Countering Archival Silences: Critical Lenses, Relationships, and Informal Archives—MarÍa P. Carvajal Regidor
- 8. Let Them Speak: Rhetorically Reimagining Prison Voices in the Archives of the Collective—Sally F. Benson
- 9. Bearing Witness to Transient Histories—Pamela Takayoshi
- 10. The Rhetorical (Im)possibilities of Recovering George Barr: Toward a Decolonial Queer Archival Methodology—Walker P. Smith
- Part Three. Unsettling Praxis and Pedagogy: Towards Pluriversality
- 11. Archival Imaginings of the Working-Class College Woman: The 1912-1913 Scrapbook of Josephine Gomon, University of Michigan College Student—Liz Rohan
- 12. Decolonizing the Transnational Collection: A Heuristic for Teaching Digital Archival Curation and Participation—Tarez Samra Graban
- 13. Archiving as Learning: Digital Archiving As Heuristic for Transformative Undergraduate Education—Jennifer Almjeld
- 14. Settling Emerging Scholars in Unsettling Territory: A Case Study—Rebecca Schneider and Deborah Hollis
- 15. Unsettling Archival Pedagogy—Amy J. Lueck and Nadia Nasr
- Contributors
