The Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies (JCAS) announces two new publications:
"An Architecture of Vanishing: Toward a Protocol of Archival Disappearance," written by Edgardo Civallero.
Download the article: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol13/iss1/14/
Abstract: This article rethinks the preservationist reflex that equates archival care with permanence. Drawing on post- and decolonial theory, it provincializes endurance as a historically situated ideal and foregrounds global traditions where disappearance, opacity, and cyclical renewal structure memory. It reframes vanishing as custodianship rather than neglect, introducing a taxonomy of protocols of epistemic disappearance-temporal, spatial, relational, semantic, and material-and a grammar of vanishing that operationalizes them as design tools. Extending to institutions, it outlines seasonal, dismantling, shadow, and nomadic archives as forms that measure success by their capacity to end well. A concluding framework articulates five principles-vanishing as care, duration as a right, opacity as protection, haunting/refusal as presence, and non-survival as integrity-through which disappearance emerges as an ethical horizon of custodianship.
"A Case for Societal Provenance: Marguerite Harper as told by the men she represented," written by V. Emily Cranwell Deinert.
Download the article: https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol13/iss1/15/
Abstract: This paper argues for making societal provenance the grounding framework for archival descriptive standards to ensure that important voices already present in archives are no longer buried. This study reclaims from archival obscurity the career of literary agent Marguerite E. Harper to illustrate the need for this expansion. Harper proves strikingly absent from some of the archives for the authors she represented. Likely an unwitting omission from archivists that uncritically accepted the narratives of these male authors, Harper's erasure provides a potent example of the ways that archival descriptive standards may unintentionally further silence historically marginalized voices within archives. The impact Marguerite Harper had on these authors' careers provides a tangible example for why we must continue the conversation around societal provenance and the ways it may be incorporated into archival descriptive standards.
JCAS is a peer-reviewed, open access journal sponsored by the New England Archivists, Yale University Library, and Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
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Sally Blanchard-O'Brien
Marketing & Outreach Associate
Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies
email.jcas@gmail.com
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