Archives, Memory, and Narratives for Living in North America

Instructors: Rachel Kirby and Morgan Ridgway
Meeting time: Thursday, 12:15-2:45 pm
Canvas site

Trickster Academy Credit: Jenny L. Davis

In this course, students will learn and hone interdisciplinary research skills and methods through an exploration of the power and politics of “the archive.” As Sadiya Hartman asks, we will question “how might it be possible to generate a different set of descriptions from [the] archive?” What happens to our understanding of history when we foreground the limits and possibilities of the archive that reveal alternative narratives for living, past, present, and future? We will interrogate the alluring power of the archive as an institution of “truth” alongside dynamic forms of collective and individual memory through performance, visual arts, and creative writing. Together we will consider sources that ask “what could have been” or “what might be?” In pursuit of these questions, we will draw heavily from Black and Indigenous scholars and creators across what has become known as the US and Canada. Reading Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved and Billy-Ray Belcourt’s genre-bending memoir A History of my Brief Body, alongside scholars like Christina Sharpe, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Saidiya Hartman, Karyn Recollet, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, we will explore the making of memory through art and narratives that blur the boundaries of time and place. As a group, we will historicize cultural productions and culturally analyze historical moments to build scholarly conversations across disciplines and genres. (Image credit: Jenny L. Davis)