Download the Syllabus (PDF)
Week 1 – Archival Thinking
Monday, January 8, 2018:
Welcome and Introductions
What is an Archive? Guiding Concepts and Questions
Approaches to Primary Source Material
Tuesday, January 9, 2018: Power in the Archive
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Preface and Ch. 1, pp. xvii-xix, 1-30. Trouillot Footnotes
Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook, “Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory,” Archival Science 2, no. 1 (2002): 1-19.
Francis Blouin and William Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Introduction: “On the Intersections of Archives and History,” pp. 3-10 (ebook).
In-class exercise: Bring a source from your own personal archive to discuss
Wednesday, January 10, 2018: Silences and Omissions
Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Ch. 3, pp.70-107. Trouillot Footnotes
Rebecca Scott, “The Provincial Archive as a Place of Memory: The Role of Former Slaves in the Cuban War of Independence (1895-98),” History Workshop Journal, no. 58 (2004): 149-66.
Thomas, Fowler and Johnson, The Silence of the Archive, Ch. 1, pp. 1-34.
Thursday, January 11, 2018: Institutional Archives and Contestation
Visit to the Colby College Archives – Miller Library, First Floor
Earl Smith, Mayflower Hill: A History of Colby College, pp. 167-199.
Jarrett Drake, “Documenting Dissent in the Contemporary College Archive,” On Archivy, November 7, 2016.
Chase Hommeyer, “An Update on Archiving Student Activism at Princeton,” Mudd Manuscript Library Blog, March 25, 2016.
Brian Whitledge, “Documenting Student Activities and Activism on Campus: Bringing Activist Alumni into the Fold,” Academic Archivist, November 13, 2017.
Due: Friday, January 12 by 5:00pm via email: Source Analysis #1
Week 2 – Archival Logics and Historical Memory
Monday, January 15, 2018: National and Colonial Logics in the Archive
Blouin and Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Ch. 1, pp. 13-31 (ebook).
Kathryn Burns, Into the Archive: Writing and Power in Colonial Peru, Introduction, pp. 1-19 (ebook).
Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Ch. 2, pp. 17-53 (ebook).
Dharma Ghosh, “National Narratives and the Politics of Miscegenation: Britain and India,” in Burton, ed., Archive Stories, pp. 27-44 (ebook).
Tuesday, January 16, 2018: Contesting Authority and Reconstituting Loss
Blouin and Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Ch. 2 and 4, pp. 32-49, 63-93 (ebook).
Eric Ketelaar, “Archival Temples, Archival Prisons: Modes of Power and Production,” Archival Science 2 (2002): 221-238.
Read a chapter of your choice from Burton, ed., Archive Stories (ebook).
Wednesday, January 17, 2018: Holocaust Testimony and Oral History
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, Preface and Ch. 1, pp. 11-35 (Ch. 8 optional)
Alessandro Portelli, The Order Has Been Carried Out, Introduction, pp. 1-20.
Noah Shenker, Reframing Holocaust Testimony, Introduction, pp. 1-18
Watch: “116 Cameras,” New York Times Op-Doc with Eva Schloss (15 min.)
Thursday, January 18, 2018: Holocaust Archives and Sites of Memory
Trip to the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine
Leave campus at 9:00am and return by mid-afternoon.
James Young, Texture of Memory, Introduction and Ch. 11, pp. 1-15, 283-322. Young Footnotes
Blouin and Rosenberg, Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives, Ch. 6, pp. 97-115 (ebook)
Listen: Oral History Interview with Gerda Haas, a founder of HHRC (1998) (Listen to 0-5:00 and selections of your choice) and look at the transcript (especially pp. 57-66 – use search function to explore the interview further)
Due: Friday, January 19 by 5:00pm via email: Source Analysis #2
Week 3 – Archives of Dictatorship, Questions of Human Rights: Studies from 20th-Century Latin America
Monday, January 22, 2018: Shifting Archival Logics: From Surveillance to Justice in Guatemala
Kirsten Weld, Paper Cadavers: The Archives of Dictatorship in Guatemala, Introduction: “The Power of Archival Thinking,” Part I and II (ebook)
(OPTIONAL) Elena Danielson, “Privacy Rights and the Rights of Political Victims: Implications of the German Experience,” The American Archivist 67, no. 2 (2004): 176-193.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018: Guatemala Police Archives and the Cold War Context
Weld, Paper Cadavers, Part III and IV (ebook)
(OPTIONAL) Barbara Zanchetta, “Between Cold War Imperatives and State Sponsored Terrorism: The United States and ‘Operation Condor,’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 39, no. 12 (2016): 1084-1102.
Wednesday, January 24, 2018: Archival Imperatives and Human Rights
Louis Bickford, “The Archival Imperative: Human Rights and Historical Memory in Latin America’s Southern Cone,” Human Rights Quarterly 21, no. 4 (1999): 1097-1122.
Amanda Strauss, “Treading the Ground of Contested Memory: Archivists and the Human Rights Movement in Chile,” Archival Science 15 (2015): 369-397.
Thursday, January 25, 2018: Stories of a Dirty War
Verbitsky, Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior. (PDF 1 and 2)
Due: Friday, January 26 by 5:00pm via email: Source Analysis #3
Week 4 – Archival Turns
Monday, January 29, 2018: Archiving Secrets
Howard Zinn, “Secrecy, Archives and the Public Interest,” Address to the Society of American Archivists, 1970.
Nick Cullather, Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952-1954 (selections – PDF 1 and 2)
Kate Doyle, “The End of Secrecy: U.S. National Security and the Imperative for Openness,” World Policy 16, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 34-51.
Listen: PRI Podcast with Kate Doyle: Documenting Latin America’s Painful Past
Tuesday, January 30, 2018: Politics of Archival Custody
LILAS Benson Latin American Studies Collection, “Identifying Post-Custodial Partners in Latin America,” (April 2016): 1-7.
Theresa Polk, “Archiving Human Rights Documentation: The Promise of the Post-Custodial Approach in Latin America,” Portal Magazine (August 2016).
Explore the Latin American Digital Initiatives archive mentioned in the first two articles.
Jennifer Schuessler, “Souvenirs of a Literary Alchemist,” The New York Times, November 24, 2014.
Society of American Archivists Statement on García Márquez Archive (December 2014).
Press Release, “García Márquez Archive Opens,” The University of Texas at Austin (October 2015).
Jennifer Schuessler, “Gabriel García Márquez’s Archive Available Freely Online,” The New York Times, December 11, 2017.
Explore the Gabriel García Márquez Digital Archive.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018: Digital Complications
Roy Rosenzweig, “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era,” American Historical Review 108, no. 3 (June 2003): 728-762.
Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast” American Historical Review 121, no. 2 (2016): 377-402.
Final take home exam will be distributed after class.
Thursday, February 1, 2018: Archiving the Future
Final exam is due by 12:00pm (submit by email). All JanPlan work is due on February 1, according to Colby policy.
Class will meet as usual. No required reading for today.
OPTIONAL:
Blouin and Rosenberg, Processing the Past, Ch. 11, pp. 207-215 (ebook).
“Update on the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress,” December, 2017.
Conclusion