Archives of Justice and Abolition
Thursday, Oct 04, 2018 | 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
691 Barrows Hall, UC Berkeley
Location is ADA accessible
Presentations and Discussions by
Kerby Lynch, Geography
and
Sine Hwang Jensen, Ethnic Studies Library
In the (After) Life: Black Lesbian Spatialities under the Emergence of Homonationalism
by Kerby Lynch
Memory, Belonging, and Archive Justice: Towards a Liberatory Archival Praxis
by Sine Hwang Jensen
Archives are sites to which people return seeking memory, belonging, and connection to the past. But the history of traditional archives and their practices have always been inextricably intertwined with that of empire, cisheteropatriarchy, and white supremacy. The urge toward and ideology of taxonomy and classification provides the foundation for “difference” and undergirds the work of naturalists, anthropologists, and that of librarians and archivists as well. Classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress systems are rooted in worldviews which marginalize the lives and experiences of oppressed peoples. Therefore, for Black, indigenous, and people of color, LGBTQ, and other historically oppressed communities, traditional archives are often a site of erasure and violence.
Drawing from experience at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library and from feminist, anti-racist, indigenous, and queer interventions into archival theory and practice, this talk aims to both demystify traditional archival practices and the work that librarians and archivists do as well as offer concrete examples of liberatory archival practices.
Sine Hwang Jensen is the Asian American and Comparative Ethnic Studies Librarian at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies Library. They are passionate about working at the intersections of libraries, archives, and social justice.