Some Changes to Our Reading Schedule

Dear Archiving Folks,

Much to my chagrin, we cannot read everything. As promised, here are the changes I'd like to make to our reading schedule, allowing us to finish the discussions we need to finish in this unit on "Archiving for Social, Critical, & Feminist Consciousness." Please do make these changes in your schedules or on your syllabi:

• T Mar 7 - Steedman ch 6 "What a Rag Rug Means" and Davy "Cultural Memory and the Lesbian Archive"; please also have Kirsch "Feminist Research" at the ready, as we will likely put Steedman and Davy into conversation with the latter pages of her chapter
• Th Mar 23 - Eubanks "Mississippi on My Mind" and Ramirez "Being Assumed Not to Be"
• T Mar 28 - unchanged
• T Apr 18 - unchanged

Some Resources for Working in the Archives

Dear Archiving Folks,

I offer a reminder that next week's schedule has been reversed: Tuesday (2/21) we are in Special Collections to further explore the Leora Pruitt King papers in all their riches; Thursday (2/23) we are in the regular classroom for a discussion of archiving for social, critical, and feminist consciousness. Next week marks the beginning of our third unit, and in this unit we may begin to think and talk more explicitly about archival erasure.

Is Nellie Here?, and FSCW Mascot

Is Nellie here? Or here, somewhere?

Before Chief Osceola, there was this guy, and then ... that guy.

-Dr. Graban

Feb 14 Case Study: Finding Aids Analysis

Dear All,

Last week we considered some of the possibilities and problems with historical revisionism through writing women's lives and un-silencing their "archives," including the idea that we (as readers) may write things into the story by our own archetypal expectations.

Feb 9 Case Study: Text as Archive

Dear Archiving Folks,

I have shortened Thursday's excerpts from Elizabeth McHenry's Forgotten Readers so that we can also read excerpts from Afua Cooper's The Hanging of Angelique (both in our Canvas CL). I seriously hope you enjoy both these projects. McHenry's is the longer of our excerpts in which she does some theory-building about "invisible readership" by examining the activities of African-American literary societies in the 19th century. Cooper's is the shorter of our excerpts in which she performs postcolonial critique by recovering and retelling the execution of Angelique, a Portuguese slave who was charged for burning her mistress's home in Montreal in 1734.

Feb 7 Case Study: Life Writing as Historical Record

Dear Folks,

Tuesday begins a quick succession of miniature case studies, intended to help us consider some of the risks and rewards of drawing on social memory as intellectual history. None of these terms is settled in our minds; thus, I offer you this unit in our course primarily to explore. To aid that exploration, I'd like to shorten the critical reading so that you have time to explore our exhibit before class.

I'll ask that half the class read Wendy Hesford's "Memory Work" and half the class read the chapter from Carolyn Heilbrun's Writing a Woman's Life. Let's arbitrarily split it up this way:

• Hesford -- Daniel, Devlin, Kaitlin, Christina, Mallorie, Shaimaa
• Heilbrun -- Alejandro, Eleanor, Jordan, Rachel, Sarah, Sidney