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Michelle Caswell to read from Urgent Archives

  • 1.  Michelle Caswell to read from Urgent Archives

    Posted May 03, 2021 04:31 PM
    New Works
    A reading series of the Archival Technologies Lab, City University of New York
    Dr. Michelle Caswell reads from Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work
    Tuesday, May 25, 2021
    12 noon ET, via Zoom

    Dr. Michelle Caswell, Associate Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the co-founder of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA). Michelle will read from her forthcoming book, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work, published by Routledge.

    Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description. Grounded in the emerging field of critical archival studies, this book uncovers how dominant western archival theories and practices are oppressive by design, while looking toward the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Based on more than a decade of ethnography at community archives sites including SAADA, the book explores how members of minoritized communities activate records to build solidarities across and within communities, trouble linear progress narratives, and disrupt cycles of oppression. The book explores the temporal, representational, and material aspects of liberatory memory work, arguing that archival disruptions in time and space should be neither about the past nor the future, but about the liberatory affects and effects of memory work in the present.

    The reading will be followed by a discussion moderated by Dr. Johnathan Thayer, Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College CUNY.

    Register in advance for this meeting:
    https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkde2hrzosEtcMuGPvQ4VrITTJbgdOD7BC   

    After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.


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    Dr. James Lowry
    Queens College, The City University of New York
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