Y-PARchiving & Localized Histories: Building Youth-Driven Curriculum in NYC

• In Event: Supporting Youth Activism in Hostile Times: Case Studies in Deepening YPAR Practices

Abstract

Our session, led by youth ages 15-20, will convene scholars interested in youth participatory archival research or Y-PARchiving (Baralles, 2023) and what it looks like in practice through the work of the Localized History Project (LHP). The LHP is a youth participatory action research project that produces youth-driven curricula alternatives to test-driven curricula. Our curriculum projects center local histories through oral interviews, archival research, and multimedia art, and challenge dominant structures both in our content, but also our pedagogical practices (Sunderram et al. 2024). Our work challenges dominant narratives by centering Asian American voices in ways currently unseen in the traditional history classroom setting. Central to our work, Youth Participatory Archival Research or Y-PARchiving recognizes local communities as extensions of the traditional classroom, where youth are informed by intergenerational connections (Baralles, 2023). In this way, youth grapple with historical ideas and themes through exploration and direct engagement with their environment. Data collected from our initial pilot survey launched in 2024 shows that while nearly 94% of students 16-22 surveyed across Long Island, New York City, and Westchester strongly agreed or agreed on the importance of learning AANHPI history in schools, yet many agree that tokenized, global histories take up the vast majority of AANHPI histories taught, if taught at all (Sunderram et al. 2024). As such, Y-PARchiving is an important means of intervention for AANHPI students to combat ideas like the perpetual foreign myth, which alienates students to believe their histories and identities are not enduring in American and local history. LHP embraces the practice of Y-PARchiving, empowering our AANHPI youth to create their own curriculum projects that culminate in documentation within our digital archive. Youth storytelling is a key part of Y-PARchiving, as youth become pedagogues that are empowered to produce “living” histories through oral storytelling and intimate archiving (Sunderram, 2023). Such work ensures that dominant colonial logics around what history is defined to be, and who historians are, are challenged ( Monteiro et al. 2017).

Author

• Shreya Sunderram, Graduate Center - CUNY