Accessing Sources: An Archival Intensive

4 credits · Graduate

This course asks how nations, regions, communities and institutions preserve their records: how are materials collected, catalogued, conserved, curated, and made known? How are we to interpret these texts within broad contexts of production and reception? Whose voices and memories are included, and whose excluded? The course will introduce students to the critical skills and methodological frameworks required for working in archives and manuscript repositories. Participants will be introduced to the reading and analysis of primary sources, and will be guided in the transcription, editing, evaluation, and publication of primary materials, which will vary in form, language, place, and era of production. In sum, students will acquire the basic tools and methods of Archival Studies, with a particular focus on positionalities and representation.