Accessioning, Archiving, and Antiracism: Critical and Creative Approaches

This course challenges artists, practitioners, and scholars to push the hermeneutic limits of archives. The course presents a series of critical essays, case studies, and workshops to support students as they develop theoretical expertise, creative thinking patterns, and practicable skills. Students will develop finding aids that support enhanced accessibility, and analyze systematic research practices that build toward equity. Ultimately they will develop acquisition plans in alignment with the Brown Libraries new acquisition plan. Beginning with an overview of what constitutes an archive, this syllabus attempts to guide learners through the acquisitioning process. It foregrounds the ways that anti-racist activists and artists work in and against archives, exploring how collecting professionals and amateurs alike can use the acquisition process to challenge dominant white supremacist narratives and hierarchies of knowledge in the service of more equitable and just institutional development.