This roundtable will bring together scholars interested in developing
and studying archives that push the boundaries of what we consider the archive.
At the roundtable, through our work, we will consider questions that arise within
archival practices and arts, such as: what constitutes or counts as an archive,
what kinds of archival delineations should be drawn, pushed back against, or ruptured,
and, perhaps most importantly, what is or should be the role of the archive in
combating systemic injustice and advancing social justice? The roundtable seeks
to bring together scholars across disciplines and community activists and archivists
who are interested in the relationship between social justice activism and the
archive, those who are building archives or deconstructing archives or
imagining new and different archives with the goal of helping communities and
those whose lives have been hidden or suppressed or ignored completely within
archives.
Archivist-activists and scholars interested in the political
and social role of the archive, especially those whose projects are geared
toward utilizing the archive as mechanism or space for social justice activism are
invited to submit proposals that demonstrate the connection between their social
justice concerns and their archival work and interests. The roundtable will be
geared toward scholars and activists engaging the archive, in both material, corporeal
and immaterial, conceptual senses. It will allow archivists and
scholar-activists alike to come together to share and make wisdom concerning
the use of the archive as a space for shaping and advancing social change, and
for changing the social and material conditions of communities that have been marginalized,
historically.