Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Reckless Verisimilitude: The Archive In James Ellroy’S Fiction, Bradley J. Wiles

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The archive as both plot element and narrative presentation factors significantly into the work of James Ellroy’s novels in the L.A. Quartet and USA Underworld Trilogy series. This article examines the important role of the archive as a source of information and evidence that Ellroy’s characters utilize in their attempts at either maintaining or attacking the status quo. Through these novels, Ellroy conveys the potential power archives wield over the trajectory of history and our understanding of it by demonstrating how the historical record is often shaped in favor of the powerful. Yet even if the archive is a manifestation …

Editors’ Preface And Acknowledgements, Sophonie Bazile, Christine L. Woodward, Zachary Griffith

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

The Death Of Professor Jones: Ghosts And Memory In A Small University Archives, Erin Dix

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The following is a true story of hauntings, literal and figurative, at a small liberal arts college in the Midwest. It is the tale of Haunted Lawrence: a walking tour of the Lawrence University campus featuring historical stories of the ghostly and unexplained, designed and led by staff in the University Archives for the past ten years. Perennially popular with the campus community, the tour has grown to plague the university archivist. This essay is an attempt to exorcise her personal Haunted Lawrence demons.

Queering The Archive: Transforming The Archival Process, Lizeth Zepeda

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The purpose of this work is to recognize the lack of queer of color lens within the archival profession that determines the appraisal, preservation, and impeding access. Queering the archive transforms the institution with possibilities of inclusivity for social justice and the rewriting of histories. Traditionally, the archival institution has reaffirmed hegemonic power structures by erasing and ignoring histories of marginalized communities. A way to disrupt this is to queer these archival institutions to confront these power dynamics and make interventions against the racist, sexist, classist and heterosexist structures that maintain them. Thus, this paper focuses on how processing through …

Images, Silences, And The Archival Record: An Interview With Michelle Caswell, Michelle Caswell, Harrison Cole, Zachary Griffith

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Dr. Michelle Caswell is an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is also an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Her book, Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (2014), which explores the role of archives and records in the construction of memory about the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia through a collection of mug shots taken at Tuol Sleng prison, won the 2015 Waldo Grifford Leland award for Best Publication from …

Volume 27: Archives, Sophonie Bazile, Christine L. Woodward, Zachary Griffith

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The 2017-2018 Editorial Collective is pleased to present the 27th volume of disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory.

Over the past year, we have compiled an exciting collection of interviews, scholarly articles, poetry, and fiction that explore the volume’s central theme: “Archives.” Archives are dynamic constellations of absence and presence, ghosts and ghouls, dust and the digital. As such, discussions of archives stretch into multiple schools of thought and practice, raising questions about power, knowledge, memory, community, and social justice. The works collected here, each one employing its own theoretical and methodological approach to archives, contribute to these important …

Queer Lives In Archives: Intelligibility And Forms Of Memory, Gina Watts

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Exploring queer archives through a variety of texts and case studies, this paper seeks to understand three primary themes: the departure of traditional archival theory in queer archives, the absence of records and what they might mean for queer history, and a conception of queer time and space contributed to by archival records. Together, these suggest a specific form of intelligibility and memory available to people identifying as queer through the existence of these communal archives, one which reaffirms a history that some were determined to bury and which challenges and expands typical understandings of activism in the archival profession. …

A Word About The Cover Art, Sophonie Bazile, Christine L. Woodward, Zachary Griffith

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

No abstract provided.

Place, Memory, And Archive: An Interview With Karen Till, Karen Till, Emily Kaufman, Christine L. Woodward

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Dr. Karen Till is Professor of Cultural Geography at Maynooth University, director of the Space & Place Research Collaborative (Ireland), and founding co-Convener of the Mapping Spectral Traces international network of artists, practitioners, and scholars. Till’s 2005 book, The New Berlin: Memory, Politics, Place, explores German memory and modernity, showing how places and spaces exemplify the contradictions and tensions of social memory and national identity. Her current book in progress, Wounded Cities, is based upon geo-ethnographic research in Berlin, Bogotá, Cape Town, Dublin, Minneapolis, and Roanoke. It highlights the significance of placebased memory work and ethical forms of care …

Subjectivity And Methodology In The Arch‘I’Ve, Elizabeth J. Vincelette

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article explores methodologies from the fields of library archival science, human geography, composition and rhetoric, and established editorial practices in English studies. By elaborating on the role of a researcher’s subjectivity in archival creation, this work expands the conversation regarding methodology and archives, especially how archives present us with new ways of seeing and making narratives during the editorial decision-making involved in their creation. Writing about my own experience, I privilege the researcher’s point of view with a narrative about my construction of a digital archive. With archival research, we should promote the revelation of methods and methodology to …

Seeking Glimpses: Reflections On Doing Archival Work, Alex Hanson, Stephanie Jones, Thomas Passwater, Noah Wilson

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article explores the role of archival research in understanding and generating social histories from the perspectives of four different doctoral students as they reflect on their archival research experiences. We argue that archival research is complex, subjective, contextual, and at times, incomplete. Our various perspectives address ideas of privilege, representation, what it means to remember (or forget), how archives are constituted and reconstituted, and where we can make meaning in archival spaces. This article demonstrates that although archival research has had a presence in Composition and Rhetoric for some time, that presence is continually shifting, and even when embarking …

Decentering Whiteness In The Public Policy Archive, Megan M. Mummey

Library Presentations

No abstract provided.