Graduate Conference at JHU: Unraveling the Archive
Archives are valuable sites of memory and knowledge, as well as sites of violence and power. In a hyper-saturated world of post-truth and fake news, archives provide a powerful tool to understand the past, interpret the present and imagine better futures. Following Walter Benjamin’s saying, scholars have a responsibility to “brush history against the grain” when delving into archival documents, to find what is absent or hidden and make it speak again. This conference presents scholars with the opportunity to explore various questions that arise when facing archives as dynamic sites of memory: How do we challenge and deal with archives as sites of power? How can queer and marginal subjects be found or salvaged in archives that erase their presence?