Welcome to the archivefutures research network, an international network of scholars and archivists engaged in speculative and theoretically informed considerations of archived manuscripts and personal papers. This research network is coordinated by Maryanne Dever (University of Technology Sydney) and Linda Morra (Bishop’s University, Canada). This site provides information about network activities and also serves to provide a noticeboard for events, developments […]
CARING FOR YOUR COLLECTIONS: fact sheets
posted by mdever
The State Library of New South Wales in Sydney has published a series of fact sheets on collection care. They are helpful for both professionals and those storing paper-based materials at home. Together they make handy set of fact sheets on preserving, storing and protecting your precious items. Fact sheets cover: Care of paper-based materials […]
CULTURE MAPPING 2022 — Archives and Afterlives: recordings available
posted by mdever
If you did not manage to catch up with this wonderful conference event live on 7-9 April 2022 you can now find recordings for most sessions online. Keynote sessions feature Professor Jacqueline Wernimont, Dartmouth College: On Dying and Being Dead in an Archive, Jacqueline Wernimont Abstract: What are the temporalities of archives? In this talk, […]
READ: On curating filing holes
posted by mdever
Those working on the material text may be aware of the glorious new enterprise that is Inscription: the Journal of Material Text – Theory, Practice, History. Created and edited by Gill Partington, Adam Smyth and Simon Morris, the journal exists both as a lavish large format physical production and an online marvel. Two issues have […]
CFP: Feeling(s) in the Archive: Emotions, Expressions, Experience
posted by mdever
The Spring 2022 meeting of Archival Kismet will be held virtually April 8-9, 2022. Its theme is “Feeling(s) in the Archive: Emotions, Expressions, Experience.” They particularly encourage scholars whose work deals with issues of emotion, affect, memory, and trauma in historical research, as well as proposals that reflect the emotional labour and experience of historical […]
Posters with Glitter Issues: Online Colloquia with Jessica Lapp
posted by mdever
As part of the University of British Columbia School of Information Colloquia, on 3 February 2022 Jessica Lapp will be presenting her work on the Newberry Library’s collection of 2017 Women’s March ephemera. The paper builds on her research program which conceptualizes feminist records creation, expanded notions of provenance and records attribution, and the creation […]
Kenneth Karmiole Lecture in Archival Studies – The Black and Latinx Experience in the Literary Archive Market
posted by mdever
Coming up on 21 January 2022 is the Kenneth Karmiole Lecture in Archival Studies presented this year by Amy Hildreth Chen, author of Placing Papers: The American Literary Archives Market (University of Massachusetts UP, 2020). She will be speaking on the topic of “The Black and Latinx Experience in the Literary Archive Market”. Abstract for […]
Definitely worth reading
posted by mdever
The following works tackle questions of materiality across different archival settings, including the impact of the digital on our understandings of materiality and archival engagements. Carrie Smith. The Page is Printed: Ted Hughes’s Creative Process. Liverpool University Press, 2021 This monograph offers the first full-length study of Ted Hughes’s poetic process. Smith poses the questions: […]
New books!
posted by mdever
A quick round up of some new books: Archival Fictions: Materiality, Form, and Media History in Contemporary Literature by Paul Benzon Description: Technological innovation has long threatened the printed book, but ultimately, most digital alternatives to the codex have been onscreen replications. While a range of critics have debated the benefits and dangers of this media […]
Reanimating Working-Class Writing
posted by mdever
In a special issue of Across the Disciplines entitled ‘Unsettling the Archives’, Jessica Pauszek contributes an article entitled Preserving Hope: Reanimating Working-Class Writing through (Digital) Archival Co-Creation. In a section dedicated to ‘Bearing Witness in Unsettling Ways’, Pauszek traces how a working-class writing network, the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, hoped and tried […]
New article: Critical Digital Archives: A Review from Archival Studies
posted by mdever
New out in The American Historical Review (September 2021) is an article by Itza A. Carbajal and Michelle Caswell that explores how archivists and historians might come together in the digital realm. The authors argue that a more developed understanding of digital archival theory and practice can provide the basis for “doing digital history better“. ABSTRACT […]
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