An archive is a site of cultural memory. It is defined by both what its contains and what it leaves out, whether intentionally or unintentionally. As Ann Stoler has explored, an archive is an epistemic space that, while promising proof texts and “truths” of the past, sometimes only offers vestiges of the violence that left the record to the victors, while the trace of the vanquished is lost.
How do we restore the traces of the vanquished, instrumentalised, and unheard? We aim to explore questions about what an archive is, what it has been and what it can be, as well as how has it been constructed and how we might prefer it be deconstructed or re-constructed. Guiding questions include: What kinds of knowledge have traditionally been included in premodern archives and how were and are such archives constructed, and, importantly for us as scholars today, who constructed and continues to construct as well as who worked with and in, and continues to work with and in such archives? What was not included or what has gone missing from such archives? How might we approach archives in novel ways to allow otherwise unheard voices to be located and considered?
We have three goals:
to restore the epistemological complexity of the premodern world to our research habits by combining our modern disciplinary knowledge as we examine our objects of study;
to create productive dialogue and exchange information about archival study across a range of practices, by bringing together librarians, curators, archivists, scholars, and the curious public
to develop a set of best practices in new, predisciplinary approaches to the lost voices of the archive.