Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar

by Francis Xavier Blouin (Editor), William G. Rosenberg (Editor)

Overview

As sites of documentary preservation rooted in various national and social contexts, artifacts of culture, and places of uncovering, archives provide tangible evidence of memory for individuals, communities, and states, as well as defining memory institutionally within prevailing political systems and cultural norms. By assigning the prerogatives of record keeper to the archivist, whose acquisition policies, finding aids, and various institutionalized predilections mediate between scholarship and information, archives produce knowledge, legitimize political systems, and construct identities. Far from being mere repositories of data, archives actually embody the fragments of culture that endure as signifiers of who we are, and why. The essays in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory conceive of archives not simply as historical repositories but as a complex of structures, processes, and epistemologies situated at a critical point of the intersection between scholarship, cultural practices, politics, and technologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472026722
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	03/02/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Francis X. Blouin Jr. is Professor of History, Professor of Information, and Director of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

William G. Rosenberg is Alfred G. Meyer Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

\rrhp\ \comp: add page numbers on proof\ \lrrh: Contents\ \1h\ Contents \xt\ Preface and Acknowledgments Part I. Archives and Archiving Introduction "Something She Called a Fever": Michelet, Derrida, and Dust (Or, in the Archives with Michelet and Derrida) Carolyn Steedman The Problem of Publicité in the Archives of Second Empire France Jennifer S. Milligan Not Dragon at the Gate but Research Partner: The Reference Archivist As Mediator Kathleen Marquis Between Veneration and Loathing: Loving and Hating Documents James M. O'Toole Archiving/Architecture Kent Kleinman "Records of Simple Truth and Precision": Photography, Archives, and the Illusion of Control Joan M. Schwartz Part II. Archives in the Production of Knowledge Introduction Out of the Closet and into the Archives? German Jewish Papers Atina Grossmann German Jewish Archives in Berlin and New York: Three Generations after the Fact Frank Mecklenburg Medieval Archivists as Authors: Social Memory and Archival Memory Patrick Geary The Question of Access: The Right to Social Memory versus the Right to Social Oblivion Inge Bundsgaard Past Imperfect (l'imparfait): Mediating Meaning in Archives of Art Nancy Ruth Bartlett An Artifact by Any Other Name: Digital Surrogates of Medieval Manuscripts Stephen G. Nichols The Panoptical Archive Eric Ketelaar Archival Representation Elizabeth Yakel Part III. Archives and Social Memory Introduction Remembering the Future: Appraisal of Records and the Role of Archives in Constructing Social Memory Terry Cook Creating a National Information System in a Federal Environment: Some Thoughts on the Canadian Archival Information Network Laura Millar Archives, Heritage, and History David Lowenthal How Privatization Turned Britain's Red Telephone Kiosk into an Archive of the Welfare State Patrick Wright Archives: Particles of Memory or More? Joan van Albada Lookin' for a Home: Independent Oral History Archives in Italy Alessandro Portelli The Public Controversy over the Kennedy Memorabilia Project Robert M. Adler Classified Federal Records and the End of the Cold War: The Experience of the Assassination Records Review Board William L. Joyce "Just a Car": The Kennedy Car, the Lincoln Chair, and the Study of Objects Judith E. Endelman Part IV. Archives, Memory, and Political Culture (Canada, the Caribbean, Western Europe, Africa, and European Colonial Archives) Introduction Memories of Colonization: Commemoration, Preservation, and Erasure in an African Archive Frederick Cooper Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance: On the Content in the Form Ann Laura Stoler The Provincial Archive as a Place of Memory: Confronting Oral and Written Sources on the Role of Former Slaves in the Cuban War of Independence (1895---98) Rebecca J. Scott Maroons in the Archives: The Uses of the Past in the French Caribbean Laurent Dubois Redemption's Archive: Remembering the Future in a Revolutionary Past Paul K. Eiss Documenting South Africa's Liberation Movements: Engaging the Archives at the University of Fort Hare Brian Williams and William K. Wallach "The Gift of One Generation to Another": The Real Thing for the Pepsi Generation Ian E. Wilson Social History, Public Sphere, and National Narratives: The Social Origins of Valencian Regional Imaginary in Nineteenth-Century Spain Mónica Burguera The Influence of Politics on the Shaping of the Memory of States in Western Europe (France) Paule René-Bazin The Role of the Swiss Federal Archives during Recent Politico-Historical Events and Crises Christoph Graf Television Archives and the Making of Collective Memory: Nazism and World War II in Three Television Blockbusters of German Public Television Wulf Kansteiner Part V. Archives and Social Understanding in States Undergoing Rapid Transition (China, Postwar Japan, Postwar Greece, Russia, Ukraine, and the Balkans) Introduction Revolution in the Archives of Memory: The Founding of the National Diet Library in Occupied Japan Leslie Pincus The New Masters of Memory: Libraries, Archives, and Museums in Postcommunist Bosnia- Herzegovina Robert J. Donia Writing Home in the Archive: "Refugee Memory" and the Ethnography of Documentation Penelope C. Papailias Qing Statesmen, Archivists, and Historians and the Question of Memory Beatrice S. Bartlett The Role of Archives in Chinese Society: An Examination from the Perspective of Access Du Mei Archives and Histories in Twentieth-Century China William C. Kirby Archives and Historical Writing: The Case of the Menshevik Party in 1917 Ziva Galili Russian History: Is It in the Archives? Abby Smith Archiving Heteroglossia: Writing Reports and Controlling Mass Culture under Stalin Serhy Yekelchyk Ethnicity, Memory, and Violence: Reflections on Special Problems in Soviet and East European Archives Jeffrey Burds Hesitations at the Door to an Archive Catalog Vladimir Lapin The Historian and the Source: Problems of Reliability and Ethics Boris V. Ananich Contributors