"Do You Need Help?": Archival Meaning Making at the Newberry Library

• In Event: Feminist Technoscience by Other Means: Reconfiguring Research Practices for World-Making Beyond the Academy - I

Abstract

Drawing from PhD fieldwork conducted at the Chicago Newberry Library, this paper explores meaning making within a distinct records environment: the Newberry’s collection of modern protest materials. Historically archives have imposed systems of categorization that have devalued or erased the lived experiences of those who experience life as intersectional. Contemporary feminist and queer archival scholarship calls attention to these gaps and fissures in the historic record, calling for modes of practice that challenge and extend entrenched archival functions and values. Reflecting on the Newberry’s modern protest materials and interviews with archivists and collaborators, I suggest that the archival worker occupies a central role in reconfiguring the archive; with a unique ability to enable feminist imaginaries, propel queer futurities, and amplify voices that have been historically been silenced, the archival worker is a central node in a larger network of material and nonmaterial relations. This paper explores the generation of knowledge within a unique archival context, and points to the intersection of archival work, records creation, records access and use, and artistic production in the creation of liveable trans- feminist and queer worlds.

Author

• Jessica M. Lapp, University of Toronto