Abstract: This roundtable will bring together scholars interested in developing and studying archives that push the boundaries of what we consider the archive. At the roundtable, through our work, we will consider questions that arise within archival practices and arts, such as: what constitutes or counts as an archive, what kinds of archival delineations should be drawn, pushed back against, or ruptured, and, perhaps most importantly, what is or should be the role of the archive in combating systemic injustice and advancing social justice? The roundtable seeks to bring together scholars across disciplines and community activists and archivists who are interested in the relationship between social justice activism and the archive, those who are building archives or deconstructing archives or imagining new and different archives with the goal of helping communities and those whose lives have been hidden or suppressed or ignored completely within archives.Archivist-activists and scholars interested in the political and social role of the archive, especially those whose projects are geared toward utilizing the archive as mechanism or space for social justice activism are invited to submit proposals that demonstrate the connection between their social justice concerns and their archival work and interests. The roundtable will be geared toward scholars and activists engaging the archive, in both material, corporeal and immaterial, conceptual senses. It will allow archivists and scholar-activists alike to come together to share and make wisdom concerning the use of the archive as a space for shaping and advancing social change, and for changing the social and material conditions of communities that have been marginalized, historically.

EVENT: ROUNDABLE at the 54th Annual NEMLA (Northeast Modern Language Association) Convention, to be held March 23rd-26th in Niagara Falls, NY, US.

LINK to CFP/to submit: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19792

Contact: jlmason1@buffalo.edu

Organizers/Co-Chairs: Nicole Crevar and Jessica Lowell Mason