Archiving for Feminist and Critical Consciousness

Dear Seminar Members:

... and a final few questions for the research log, inspired by yesterday's unpacking of selected passages from Kirsch's chapter on feminist research at a "crossroads":

1) Based on what you understand to be fundamental principles of the "feminist ethic" in composition studies, is it possible to justify either the Banneker History Project or Ripley's edited collection of Black Abolitionist Papers as feminist? Why, or why not? Draw heavily on all texts you use to justify a response.

2) Does either of these projects (Banneker History Project or Black Abolitionist Papers) complicate or reflect some of the limitations of the feminist research paradigm that Kirsch discusses on pp. 17-23?

3) At this point in the semester, what is your understanding of how feminist theories can or should intersect with archival theories? In other words, how could you (and why would you) put one of our feminist theorists this semester into conversation with one of our archival theorists? On what would they converse? How would their ideas enhance or complicate one another? How could one theorist act as a lens onto another theorist's ideas? And how could that relationship, in turn, help to answer part of your research question?

Good luck and have fun extending this toward your final project!

-Professor Graban

Digitization, Access, Vandalism, and More ...

Hi, everyone.

Today's discussion of digitization inspired a few more questions for me that I would like to share. Feel free to take up one or more of these in your final research log:

1. What makes the 9/11 archive an archive, rather than just a collection of born-digital texts? (You may be interested in viewing the older version of the 9/11 site, as well.) In responding, think about some of what we discussed in class today, i.e., about archival spaces being negotiated and renegotiated, about the expectations we bring to archives in terms of power, purpose, pliability, in/stability, etc.

2. The following photograph records from the Monroe County Historical Society make a nice example of records that show interaction between artifacts and the public.

• Woolery Stone Company
• Cline Stone Mill
• Smithville Train Station

Can you articulate or describe the kinds of archival interactions that these records promote? Support? Encourage? Now, what kinds of interactions (or relationships) would they discourage? (Hint: try using the page before responding.)

3. Ramsey cites Karin Becker of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm in saying that "the museum has also become the institutionalized arbiter of value" (Becker 3, qtd. in Ramsey 84). What does this mean, and how is it significant in light of some your own discoveries about archival value, copyright, and technology during today's class discussion?

4. What kinds of practical, conceptual, and theoretical gaps can digitizing women's collections create (according to Ramsey, Cox, and Carlson)? You might think about whether you see any relationship between these three readings and Bordelon (on Gertrude Buck) and Endelman (on cultural and material artifacts).

5. Ramsey mentions that digital archives exist in "non-locations" (86). What does this mean, and how does this resonate with something you remember from Steedman (Dust), Boles ("Disrespecting Original Order"), or Yakel ("Archival Representation")?

6. Should we digitize the Hennel Hendricks Collection? Why and/or why not?

Have fun!

-Professor Graban

Literary Depictions of / Literature as "Archive"

Hi, everyone.

As promised, I offer further discussion questions for your Research Journal Log. Some of these were inspired by last week's role play on arrangement and dis/order, and some were inspired by today's discussion of Hoosier folklore and our quick analysis of Dillon's "category disorder" and of Sanborn's "Humorous Women." As we move steadily into the next unit and begin thinking about your individual archival research projects, it becomes more important for me to see what and how much you can do with text -- i.e., demonstrating how your ideas stem from the texts we read, demonstrating how you can eloquently put two or more complicated texts into conversation with each other, and demonstrating how much you can unpack a segment or passage by noting patterns, analogies, key terms, or useful paraphrases that in turn illuminate other parts of the text.

1) In the "Preface" to Hoosier School-Master, Eggleston lists some implicit hopes for the novel alongside some of his concerns about writing it (including, perhaps, that his novel could contribute to the formation of a Hoosier literature). One such concern was that readers would think he exaggerated his dialectical descriptions, rather than preserving their "true usus loquendi" (6). Do you notice any patterns in the dialectic, i.e., according to social standing, gender, political orientation, etc.? In other words, is Eggleston's Hoosier provincialism classifiable by any other means?

2) Look up "assemblage" in the OED and the SAA Glossary (both are linked to our Course Resources page). Craft a new definition, in which you synthesize these entries with Elizabeth Maddock Dillon's notion of "category disorder" and Deleuze and Guattari's "lines of articulation or segmentarity." Then, locate a segment or passage from Hoosier School-Master that has to do with leaving or not leaving historical evidences behind, and that you can justify as assemblage.

3) Compare two or more scenes or accounts of domesticity in Hoosier School-Master. What are the politics in such a comparison, i.e., what "forms of agency and power float across different relationships" that are only made visible in the act of comparing (Dillon)?

4) How are those politics similar to or different from Steedman's "memory" of Richard Hoggart's 1958 "rag rug" in Elizabeth Gaskell's 1848 novel (Steedman 113-115)?

5) According to Jarratt, in what ways should the Hoosier School-Master (or literary histories in general) be suspect? On what basis? Please draw heavily on both texts.

6) If you were editing Eggleston's manuscript in 1871 from serial to book form, would you prefer to leave the strikes in the text to show it is a revision in progress, to move the strikes to the endnotes, or to erase them altogether? Justify your response.

-Professor Graban

The Hoosier School-Master

Dear Seminar Members:

As promised, here are some questions in advance of Tuesday's "Literary Depictions of/Literature as Archive" discussion. Eggleston's novel is somewhat long and may seem tangential to the themes of our class thus far, so these questions are intended to help you focus (and not to spoil your unadulterated enjoyment of the book).

1) Select one scene from the novel that you think is the most "historically rich" or "critically insightful." Be prepared to unpack it for us in class on Tuesday, to justify your selection, and to bring it into conversation with something we have already read in class.

2) The Hoosier School-Master is fiction, not documentary, but Eggleston considered himself to be a competent historian of rural education. How does he (seem to) rely on history in his novel to document the Hoosier teacher? As you read, do you see evidence of what could be archival discoveries, or can you envision how he might have used archival information to craft the story?

3) Where should we be skeptical of the "history" he narrates? In other words, in what ways do you think "Hoosier education" represents a construct of specific social or institutional beliefs?

See you next week,

-Professor Graban

Martha Ballard Case Study

Dear Seminar Members:

The preparation for our Case Study is in two parts, and it most likely sounds and looks more complicated than it is. Part One gives you an opportunity to explore the online version of Laurel Ulrich's book based on Martha Ballard's diary, while Part Two asks you to do some mediated reading. I'll ask each of you to informally present (as in, talk us through) your responses to this activity on Tuesday.

Part One
From the main page, click on “A Midwife’s Tale: The Book,” and read "About Laurel Thatcher Ulrich," read pp. 3-12 and 34-35 of the Introduction, and read the Epilogue to her book on the diary. Allow yourself some time to adjust to reading in this online format if you aren't completely comfortable. Please do the following in your Research Journal Log:

1. Summarize what you think is the (or are the) justification(s) for preserving and digitizing this diary.
2. Note Ulrich’s description of past assessments of the diary on pp. 8-10. What clues does she give about the reasons why she saw more of interest in it than past researchers had seen?
3. Choose one of the passages from Ballard's diary that Ulrich quotes in her Introduction. Read around the passage and consider how the abstraction of this one passage helps create historical meaning, that is, how does separating a particular entry from the mass in which it is embedded help researchers reconstruct a historical narrative?

Part Two
Next, read one half of the account called "One Rape, Two Stories,” which is on the “doing history” section of the Martha Ballard website. Amanda, please read only “the official story.” Kasey and Vincent, please read only "Martha Ballard's Story." It is a long account, so feel free to skim for just a sense of the event.

(The actual account is in the left text bar, while the archival documents used for the account are in the main window. To read any of the archival documents, click on "view image.")

1. Considering only the half of the account you have been assigned, summarize the events and list the main characters involved, as best you can. Discuss the credibility of the charge as you understand it.
2. Then, read the other half of the account (Amanda would read "Martha Ballard's story" while Kasey and Vincent would read "the official story"). Given your initial introduction to the story, what was surprising or intriguing about the second version? Did your assessment of the credibility of the charge change after that second reading, or remain the same?
3. Now, beginning at the diary's main page, locate the full text of the quoted passage that you read for step 3. above. You can use the "go to a date" search feature to find the entry you need. Read the entries for a week before and a week after your choice. Does your response to step 3. above change, or remain the same?
4. What questions does this activity raise for you if any, about the nature of online archives, about historicizing lesser-known documents, about diaries as archival record (or as archives), or about archival methodologies? Alternatively, what answers do you feel this activity has provided, if any, to questions that have been lingering for you so far this semester?

Feel free to let me know if questions come up as you prepare.

--Professor Graban

Blouin's Social Mediation and Suffrage Timelines

Hi, everyone.

As promised, here are links to the timelines we examined in class today, along with some of the questions that guided our critical examination of them. I'd like to continue this discussion at the beginning of Thursday's class, as a segueway into Steedman and Jarratt. I have also included the preparation suggestions I made for Thursday's reading.

Today's Activity
Locate and compare the following timelines of Suffrage history:

Laurie Mann’s Timeline of Women’s Suffrage in the United States
“One Hundred Years Towards Suffrage” (hosted by NAWSA)
“A History of the American Suffragist Movement”
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000

Discuss some of the explicit and implicit differences between the timelines and how they represent the movement. Note any interesting patterns or dissonances between them.

Critical Examination Questions
Blouin's key claim seems to be that "'Archives,' ... is beginning to emerge in ... cultural and historical studies as an object of study, not simply as a place where study occurs" (103). How do these timelines reflect that claim?

Following that claim, Blouin cites Jacques Derrida to ask how one can "'prove the absence of archive?'" (104), by which he means "reconcil[ing] deeply held historical beliefs when existing archival evidence seems to point to the contrary or ... to reveal nothing at all" (104). How could the timelines -- or more specifically, the patterns and gaps we notice between them -- prove the absence of their larger archive? What larger gaps or questions do they raise for us?

An alternative question is this: In what way could these timelines -- or more specifically, the patterns and gaps you notice between them -- represent Blouin's "power relationships," "mediation," or "social memory"?

Preparation for Thursday
As you read Jarratt's article and Steedman's first chapter, try to do the following to help you read:

1. summarize the main point of each essay and list the major sources, voices, evidences they use to construct that main point (i.e., how does each author "build her theory," so to speak?)
2. write a brief response to each author in which you tell her (directly) how her essay has either enhanced or complicated your understanding of "history," "historiography," "modernism," or "feminism."

As always, any of the above makes great fodder for your research journal log, as do the questions below.

I look forward to hearing your responses on Thursday!

-Professor Graban

Problem-Solving Questions

Dear Seminar Members:

Today marks the halfway point in our first Archival Problem-Solving Exercise, so I thought I should offer a set of questions that has been building from our reading and discussion the past few weeks. Several of these questions came to fruition for me last week, while watching you investigate the Mary Hatt papers and the Dames Club Records and while talking about how those collections formed. I offer them here, as a kind of interpretive lens onto what we are doing, and I encourage you to take up one or multiple of these in your Research Journal or your Problem-Solving Report (as you wish):

• For all of these writers (Mattias, Sharer, Bradsher, Hunter), what is at stake in “collecting” something, i.e., if we were to stop collecting, how bad would that be or what effects would that have?

• How many of those assumptions/beliefs do you see reflected in the scope and arrangement of the Mary Geraldine Hatt collection or in the Dames Club collection?

• How does gender seem to get represented in this archive (or these collections)? What about race (if at all)? What about class (if at all)? What about other things?

• What assumptions might a researcher make about gender, race, class based on this archive (or these collections)?

• Was it provenance or original order that determined its arrangement? How might each system (provenance or original order) cause certain items to be more visible than others? Or less visible?

• Does the collection represent what you think is “full” or “fair” coverage of the subject? If so, why? If not, why not? What drives your expectations of “full” and “fair”?

• In what ways does/could this collection carry intellectual value (i.e., what questions does it raise or processes does it make possible, or concepts does it complicate or disrupt)?

• Would this collection equip us to think about archiving more as literary investigation, or cultural interpretation, or civic engagement, and why (i.e., does it appear to hold more literary value, cultural value, or civic value)?

Good luck and have fun with this,
Professor Graban

Who owns the "past"?

Hi, everyone.

I was reflecting today on some of the discoveries you made in the Archives during Thursday's class, not only about Mary Geraldine Hatt's whereabouts on campus while she was a student here, but also about the kinds of information you were able to easily discern from the boxes and about the ways we are accustomed to looking for information, even if the boxes don't provide it. That called to mind one of Hunter's powerful (I think) implications about archives and manuscripts in his "Introduction" -- the implication that in most cases, history would never be known (or be understood as a "history") if someone had not gone out to deliberately gather it.

I take this impression from the text box on page 14, in which Hunter cites a 2002 article from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press on the first public consciousness of the 1929 stock market crash. It is possible that we might not have understood it as such a "crash" had we not had access to the 1930s census data showing how home values and rent costs increased so exponentially in such a short period of time. Hunter doesn't go so far as to say that histories are constructed, but I think there are strong implications in that direction. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that events may not readily take on historical significance in our minds until we have some way to organize them, measure them, and valuate them. Either way, it sparked a new question for me: What characterizes "past histories" and how can we know the "past"? Who owns the "past"?

I'm still chewing on this notion -- I offer it up to you as journal fodder, as you finish the first step of your Problem Solving Exercise, and as you begin to assign meaning to (or see meaning in) what you are doing. It seems integral to Hunter because he chooses to introduce us to archives (and to differentiate them from other kinds of repositories) by outlining a typology of manuscript collectors, which in turn assumes that this typology is tied to questions of power, control, and interests. You might think about whether and how much these same assumptions are reflected in the work you are doing or the way you are approaching the primary documents at IU.

Next week, when Professor Kellams and I guide you in the second part of the Exercise, we will be demonstrating some online resources and archival research tools. In the meantime, feel free to begin browsing our resources and to see what may be there for you. Please use the weekend to puzzle over your tasks and remember to send us any questions by 9:00 a.m. on Monday 9/13.

Yours in making meaning in the archives,
-Professor Graban

Cooley and Sharer - Thursday readings

Dear Seminar Members:

Thank you for an enjoyable first day. Between now and Thursday's class, you will be receiving an invitation to our course weblog, via e-mail. Simply follow the link in the e-mail invitation to get signed on to our blog. Feel free to let me know if you have trouble signing on.

For Thursday, we are reading excerpts from Cooley's novel The Archivist and a brief article by Wendy Sharer on family archives. When we meet, we'll bring them into conversation on the concept of "archive" -- what are the various ways we define, understand, and value this concept; how does each of our readings present the "archive" or the archivist? As a reminder, Cooley's novel moves back and forth in time -- between 1990 and 1965. Of course, you may feel some gaps in the plot line that we can talk through when we meet.

Have a good week until then,
-Professor Graban

Welcome to the Course!

Welcome to English L470 and Gender Studies G402 for the Fall 2010 semester! This dedicated blog space will host announcements, updates to our course calendar, gateways for assignments, and a forum for conversation as we embark on our research. Feel free to browse the links at right to preview (or review) any of our course documents.

-Professor Graban

Course Resources

If you are off campus and cannot access any of the following databases or repositories, log in first through IU Libraries.

LOCAL ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection
Herald-Times Online
IU Archives and Office of Records Management
IU Archives Finding Aids sites
Lilly Library
Monroe County Historical Society

NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Archive Grid
National Archives and Records Administration
National Archives on Women
Smithsonian Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web

UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES
Archives for Research on Women and Gender (UT San Antonio)
Emory Women Writers Resources Project
Midwest Women’s Historical Collection (UIC)
Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture (Duke)
Schlesinger Library on History of Women in America (Radcliffe)
University of Michigan’s “Women’s Education Evolves 1790-1890”
Women and Leadership Archives (Loyola)

PRIMARY TEXTS ONLINE
Black Women Writers
Digital Schomburg African-American Women Writers
The Internet Archive (e-books and texts)
Library of Congress “American Women” Project
Library of Congress “American Memory” Project
Library of Congress “National Woman Suffrage” Collection
Making of America (Cornell and Michigan)
19th-century Schoolbooks Project (Nietz Collection at Pittsburgh)
North American Women’s Letters and Diaries
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories
“Scribbling Women” Public Media Foundation
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
Women Writers (U Virginia Electronic Text Center)
Women Writers Project (Brown U)

GENERAL WRITING AND RESEARCH
Archival Terms Glossary (SAA)
Archives and Archival Memory (Maureen Flynn-Burhoe)
Citing Electronic Sources from Library of Congress
Evaluating Information (IUB)
JSTOR journal archive
MLA Style Tips from Diana Hacker
MLA Page Formatting (Hacker Handbooks)
Online Writing Lab (OWL at Purdue)
Oxford English Dictionary Online (OED)
Project Muse journals online
Worldcat Libraries Database
Writing Guides at CSU (Disciplinary)

Research Journal Prompts

Prompt #5 (for 11/23)
For your last research journal [rejoicing, exuberance, applause!], I'd like you to synthesize your research findings to this point. By "synthesize," I don't mean putting together summaries of individual articles, but rather discussing -- as coherently as you can -- a tentative "answer" to your research question, and drawing heavily on your sources to explain that answer. Think of this as a mini-thesis with an explanation, based on your research so far. Since I am unfamiliar with most of your sources, I'll need you to accommodate me as much as possible by unpacking terms and concepts from what you read. Educate me as much as you can so that I know why and what you are drawing from each text. It will probably take you several pages to do this (3-4, with separated Works cited), but I think it will give you some momentum before the Query-in-Progress paper. And, I'd like to challenge you -- just a bit -- by asking you to draw on at least 2 sources from the research bibliography I distributed, at least 2 chapters from Steedman's Dust, at least 2 sources from the coursepack, and any other sources you have located via JSTOR or Project Muse, as well as the key primary texts you'll be discussing from the Hennel Hendricks Collection.

Prompt #4 (for 11/9)
In 2-3 pages, discuss and justify whether you think women in archival spaces are best represented by one of the following terms: location (Jarratt); assemblage (OED, SAA Glossary, handout); or re/map (Bordelon). As part of your justification, discuss which aspects of each term make them the optimal choice. While your response will likely focus on the appropriateness of one term, you may also wish to discuss the inappropriateness of another, or to do some comparison of terms in your justification. Feel free to use either the Hendricks collection or one of the digital collections from Problem-Solving Report #2 to aid your response. Please draw heavily on all texts that you use.

Prompt #3 (for 10/7)

After completing both accounts of the Martha Ballard Case Study, in 2-3 pages discuss what kind of narrative or history each account allows you to construct. What are some of the reasons for that construction? Consider how the concepts of “absence,” “remembering,” or “representation” (from Steedman and Yakel) can help you discuss what you observe. What other questions did this activity raise for you?

Prompt #2 (for 9/28)

In 2-3 pages, compose a response to one of the following questions. Draw on Blouin, Steedman, Heilbrun, and/or Jarratt to help you make your response:

• What can or should be the relationship between archives and their subjects, and between subjects and their histories?
• How could we justify archiving as a distinctly "feminist" project, and what are some reasons why we might want to do so? Not do so?
• How could we justify archiving as mediation, interaction, or intervention (choose only one), and what are some reasons why we might want to do so? Not do so?

Prompt #1 (for 9/7)
Identify a collection held by you or your family and write a brief finding aid for it, in which you describe its origins, scope, arrangement, or organization, purpose, and contents. In a couple of pages, discuss the humanities (or other) research potential for such a collection. What principles from our readings (Cooley and Sharer) influenced how you would ultimately describe, arrange, or justify this collection?

Archival Problem-Solving Exercises

Problem-Solving Exercise #2
Digital Repositories and Archives

For this Problem-Solving Exercise, your group will consider all of the implications – archival, organizational, historical, social, and critical – of representing women in digital spaces. Locate and examine one collection from each of the repositories listed below (for a total of 6 collections), paying attention to scope, aim, arrangement, navigation, and anything else noteworthy:

Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture

Library of Congress “American Women” project

University of Michigan’s “Women’s Education Evolves 1790-1890”

North American Women’s Letters and Diaries

UVA “Salem Witch Trials”

Pennsylvania State University Eberly Archives

Consider the following:

• Who seems to be the audience for the collections you have examined?
• What have been the criteria for selecting and preserving them?
• What principles seem to inform the arrangement, description and accessibility of materials in these collections?
• What are the factors that you think have guided the re/construction of these collections, and how might those factors be prioritized?
• How can the locations (or historical placements) of women in these archives be construed as both limitation and agency?

Now consider the decisions you and your group have made about how best to process the Cecilia Hennel Hendricks collection, and compare them with the factors and the principles you have noted above. What possibilities and constraints can you notice in all of these collections (including yours)? In other words, what should archivists keep in mind when deciding how best to represent the social, rhetorical, and/or literary activities of women in digital spaces versus in print spaces?

Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part Two)
Beyond the IU Archives

Next Step - Option 1: Ever since you learned that Hatt was an early Fulbright Scholar for South Africa, you have decided to write your final paper for the class on female Fulbright scholars. Where would you go to unearth information about other female scholars, their countries of service, and their influence on the profession?

Next Step - Option 2: Because of your research, you have become interested in the pioneering status of Richard Dorson, known as the “father of American folklore” and Warren E. Roberts, the first person to earn a Ph.D. in Folklore in the United States. You are hoping to write an essay on either of these pioneers for a brand new undergraduate research journal published by the Mortar Board Senior Honor Society. Where would you go to find other information on these scholars, particularly links between their work and local or national genealogical societies?

Next Step - Option 3: Your sociology professor was so impressed with your program that she suggested you take on an independent study and write a paper about campus civil rights protests, broadly construed. She thinks it could work as your graduate school admissions essay. Where else can you go to find good information about how IU’s civil rights activities fit in with other universities’ activities in the nation?

Next Step - Option 4: You have decided to look further back chronologically, especially since some of your findings on Women’s Clubs have raised your awareness of trans-Atlantic precursors to what have become known as distinctly American literacy practices. One of your classmates mentioned a woman by the name of Jane Johnson as having some presence in one of the campus collections. What can you find out about Johnson, both on campus and off? Where could you go for the most comprehensive information on how Johnson’s collection impacted domestic literacy practices in the new world?

Next Step - Extra Credit Option: Your Herald Times article gained so much positive attention that your public history professor has suggested you write an honors project focused on stories of early transit disasters in the middle west region of the United States. Where else might you go for anecdotes, information and images?

Problem-Solving Exercise #1 (Part One)
In the IU Archives

Option 1: You have been assigned a report on IU alumna Mary Geraldine Hatt for your Gender, Culture, and Society class, and you need to know what year she graduated from IU, what her degree is in, and her address while on campus. How would you locate this information, and what are the answers? What else can you find out about her?

Option 2: As a summer intern in the department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, you are helping to develop an exhibit on Folklore Studies. You know that the IU Archives has a somewhat strong, but mostly unprocessed collection. You want to include some artifacts in your exhibit, but have had little luck so far. How would you locate this information? What is available?

Option 3: For the next Martin Luther King Jr. Day Celebration, you are creating a program on civil rights protests for the Office of Student Organizations and Leadership Development, and you want to include some information about the range and type of activities that have occurred on IU’s campus and in Bloomington to commemorate these protests. What types of resources would be useful for your program and how would you locate them?

Option 4: In your Women and Literature class, you recall reading an article about the importance of women’s clubs, parlor groups, and literary circles on the formation of women’s discourse in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Someone told you that “The Dames Club” met on IU’s Bloomington Campus and you are interested in learning more about what they did. How would you find out about the Club’s history, and what kinds of records can you access and would you use to learn more about their discourse practices?

Extra Credit Option: Your stellar work on the Indiana Daily Student has landed you a paid internship at the Herald Times for the summer writing a town-and-gown history column. You’re starting with an article for a local newspaper on the historic Purdue train wreck of 1903 (which your history professor mentioned in passing one time). The Purdue football team was traveling to Indianapolis to play the annual IU-Purdue game, and you would like to know if the IU Archives has any information on it. Where would you look up this type of information? Briefly describe what’s available.