Archival Hauntings: Theoretical Entanglements With an Ancestor

• In Event: 71.013 - The Biographical and Documentary Research SIG Business Meeting Presents: The (Im)Possibilities of Biography: Persisting Methodological Issues in Representing Women's Lives

Abstract

In this paper, I draw from my ongoing feminist work on an educator/ancestor who was part of an important shift in women’s educational writing in the 19th century United States. I share how “she”—deceased now for more than a century—has served as a multidimensional vehicle for me to explore women’s informal educational contributions historically as well as a touchstone for thinking about the (im)possibilities of conducting and re-presenting biographical work with ancestors. In this sense, the biographical work is as much about the theoretical and methodological questions in my own historical moment that arise from our entanglements as they are about representing “her” as a liberal humanist subject, who, like me, was engaged in a feminist project of seeking “more bearable worlds” (Ahmed, 2017, p.1) for women.

Author

• Lucy E. Bailey, Oklahoma State University