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Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
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3 Jan, 14 tweets, 9 min read
During 2021, lots of important work on #ArchivalSilences came out. Scholars from various disciplines using different methods explored what, how, and why it is missing from the historical record--and its implications.

In this thread, I would like to highlight some. 1/
Celeste Henery wrote about Rosa who left a "rebellious archival footprint" by risking free speech and eventual death to tell her truth. 2/
aaihs.org/excavating-the…
.@janasinakeck assessed data ethics & power balances when using digitized material, and asked:
"Who gets to be remembered and historicized by ways of (digital) record creation and analysis? Who is forgotten or silenced...?" 3/
ghi-dc.org/fileadmin/publ…
.@lievesofgrass and @sebastianahnert used simulations of "collection, archival and digitization practices" that result in absences/gaps in historical data to understand how missing data affect network analysis. 4/
culturalanalytics.org/article/25943-…
.@shannonmattern essay on 'nothingness' as an ontological entity offered, among others, a nice discussion about archival silences & the underlying regimes of exclusion and erasure of people. 5/
placesjournal.org/article/how-to…
.@sharonmleon and the "On These Grounds" team released a thoughtful descriptive model that centers ethical commitments for reparative justice work when doing #linkeddata work. 6/
onthesegrounds.org/s/OTG/page/alp…
The @InvisibleAus bot continued tirelessly to resurface and reinscribe into the historical record people who were meant to be dehumanized through official policies. 7/

This @librarycompany online exhibition went behind the scene exploring "collecting and curation practices over nearly 300 years" to make visible "unseen people, places, meanings, and aesthetics." 8/
librarycompany.org/digital-imperf…
.@TimeTravelAllie & @juliannenyhan interrogated power asymmetries in colonial catalogues asking: "do data-driven approaches further entrench archival absences and silences? Can digital approaches be used to highlight or recover absent data?" 9/
academic.oup.com/dsh/advance-ar…
.@jmddrake 's article about the "sound of silence" and the "sight of absence" is an ethnography of archives "as dialectical processes that concentrate and codify power." 10/

elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol8/iss1…
.@professorcaz 's book "Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work" discusses how archives are "oppressive by design" and calls archivists to disrupt this cycle of oppression *in the present*. 11/
bookshop.org/books/urgent-a…
In a volume edited by @NThylstrup @Agos_Daniella @_annie_ring @KristinVeel @kanarinka, scholars explored how gaps, omissions and uncertainties, inherent in archives, are perpetuated--"perhaps even amplified"--in big data. 12/
mitpress.mit.edu/books/uncertai…
Wonderful to see @toniasutherland being funded to conduct important, reparative work on "Redescription as Restorative Justice in American Archives" to rectify harmful description & enact social justice. 13/
I think I will wrap this thread up. This is of course only a small selection of projects and scholarship. You can also see other previous threads on this topic. 14/14

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More from @amaliasl

Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
18 May 21
A thread on erasures and #archivalsilences.

How can we 'see' people whose culture was meant to be suppressed in the historical record?
Wet plate photography in the 1800s made tattoos disappear. This photographic method "used by European settlers served to erase this cultural marker" and Māori intangible heritage. 1/
petapixel.com/2018/07/09/wet…
When women are erased from the historical record because "historically it has been assumed that uncredited [books] were made by men," their bodies tell a different story. #gender #archivalsilences 2/
atlasobscura.com/articles/medie…
Read 11 tweets
Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
18 Mar 21
The online availability of massive amounts of digitized material creates a false sense of accomplishment when we find that one specific item that is useful to our research.

In the process, we miss serendipity and context.

A thread in praise of aggregates. 1/
Each item in an archives is part of aggregations, i.e. "sets of records whose affinity results from their mode of creation, assembly, maintenance, or use by the record’s creator or whose unity was imposed during archival processing." 2/
dictionary.archivists.org/entry/aggregat…
Aggregations are parts of a hierarchical whole (fonds or record group).

Those who use physical archives and finding aids know that the goal of archival description is to reflect not only the content, but also the intricate relationships (context) among material. 3/
Read 12 tweets
Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
17 Aug 20
If you're developing online classes: Don't lose time trying to get material digitized.

There are *so* many primary sources already digitized! It is much easier to adapt your class to what's available!

A thread (with threads) and maybe some ideas for #TeachingWithArchives:
1/ Why not use #digitalarchives that challenge students to go beyond what they can 'see', and find those that are usually 'silenced' in archives.

This thread offers such examples:
2/ If you want more examples, there is a longer list here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1YK…
Read 15 tweets
Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
2 Apr 20
Since pretty much everyone under quarantine has to use digitized primary sources, I thought it might be useful to point to #digitalarchives that *explicitly* acknowledge & caution users abt #archivalsilences in their contents, and describe their work to rectify them.

A thread.
1/ A note: Most people appreciate the easiness of online access to archival material, but tend to forget that all #digitization is selective.
2/ This means that what you see online is usually not “everything” that an institution holds abt a topic. It's important to understand the digitized together w the physical. Even if you can't access physical records now, you'll be able to better contextualize what you see online.
Read 21 tweets
Amalia S. Levi Profile picture
2 Jan 20
A thread of some favorite tweets from 2019 that challenge us to ‘un-see’ in order to ‘see’.

How do we find information about people whom the archival record purposefully excludes or forgets? #archivalsilences
Read 12 tweets

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