Reimagining the Archives

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

For historians interested in the lives of Black and Indigenous people, queer and 2-Spirit relatives, women, the working-class, and other marginalized communities, the traditional archive can be a difficult place to navigate. How do we uplift the experiences of those pushed to the margins of history? If their stories have not been preserved in archival collections, then where can we find them? Can we imagine beyond the many biases, mistakes, misinterpretations of the documentary record? In this reading-intensive methods course, students will engage the works of Black and Indigenous historians who utilize speculative fiction and critical fabulation to reveal histories lost to enslavement, settler colonialism, and sexism. Through these texts and their own speculative history project, students will learn the merits, challenges, and impact of combining rigorous archival research, critical theory, and creative narrative in order to re-imagine the past.