GSLIS to co-host the International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA) in Kingston, Jamaica

7 & 8 November 2024

The University of the West Indies with the City University of New York 

Call for Contributions

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”

Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth[1]

Where are the germs of imperial rot in archival thinking? As record-making and record-keeping were central technologies of empire, allowing the control of agents at a distance and the surveillance of colonial subjects from the metropoles, records work has long been colonial work.[2] Where is imperialism’s imprint still discernible in archival concepts, terminology and practices? These questions require our urgent attention as records are weaponised by the formations of empire that are still operating today.[3]

At the same time, these germs of imperial rot partly inform and forge our native contemporary cultural identities. We might consider examples of the exertion of native agency and participation in the records creation process and the function of Indigenous silences that also inform and forge contemporary archives. What are instances where archival concepts were wholly or partly embraced or co-opted for the survival of our native knowledges and communities? How can old archival ideas support the movement from Indigenous survival to sovereignty?

 As was noted in 2021, “the field of archival studies in the West has not done much to trouble its origin story, which recites a lineage of ideas that come down to us through the texts of Muller, Feith and Fruin, Jenkinson and Schellenberg. Are there different stories we can tell about our intellectual past(s)? Stories that help us see the present and future differently by casting the past in new light?”[4] Such questions form the central provocation of ICHORA 2024, which seeks to inaugurate a next stage in the decolonisation of archival thought - a project already underway[5] - by looking further into the past for those “seeds of rot” that make critical intellectual history a vital field of contestation.

We invite colleagues to submit proposals for interventions in any format (for example: performance, recitation, roundtable, individual paper, film screening, etc.). Possible topics might include:

• Contemporary native records creation processes and spaces in historical context

• Histories of archival praxes of resistance

• Critical histories that trouble or reject established origin stories for current archival hegemonies.

• Histories of archival thought or practice that focus solely on non-Western traditions, including oral, written, material, performative, and spiritual traditions

• Comparative international or intercultural histories that de-centre Western archival dogma

• Analyses of specific concepts and terms as they have been used over time to colonial or liberatory ends.

• Biographical sketches of figures in archival history who have contributed to colonialism or the anti-colonial struggle, including in the history of ideas.

• Critical histories of archival education and training in the propagation of hegemonic archival thinking and its discontents

• Globalised archival practices and the struggle for local control

• Explorations that trouble the binary between colonial and native, exploring the complexities of post-colonial archival compromises

ICHORA emerged from and has mostly been held in Anglophone spaces. The programme committee anticipates that the conference’s bridge language will be English, but invites submissions from across linguistic and cultural traditions, and will work to support participation and communication across languages with what limited resources we have, understanding that communication may not be easy or even fully possible.

Note that proposals that do not take a historical perspective will not be considered.

The conference will be held fully in person and will not be recorded.

Abstracts (500 words max.) and presenter bios (200 words max.) should be emailed to james.lowry@qc.cuny.edu  by 22 May 2024.

About ICHORA

ICHORA was established to promote the study of the history of record-keeping. This will be the first ICHORA to be hosted in a liberated country of the Global South : The conference follows previous ICHORAs in Toronto (2003), Amsterdam (2005; 2015), Boston (2007), Perth (2008), London (2010), Austin (2012), Melbourne (2017), and hosted online by the University of Michigan (2020), and by TNA / FARMER (UK) (2022).

Timeline

22 May                   Abstracts due to james.lowry@qc.cuny.edu

22 June                  Speakers notified

1 October               Registration opens

7 & 8 November     ICHORA, Kingston, Jamaica

Organizing Committee

• Stanley Griffin (Chair), Deputy Dean, Undergraduate Studies (Humanities), University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica

• Rosemarie Heath, Head, Department of Library and Information Studies, UWI Mona

• Suchetta Stephenson, Marketing Officer, Faculty  of Humanities & Education, UWI Mona

Programme Committee

• James Lowry (Chair), Associate Professor, City University of New York, Lenape and Matinecock land, Turtle Island

• Sumayya Ahmed, Executive Director, Black Metropolis Research Consortium, Homelands of the Ojibwe, Odawa, Peoria, Potawatomi and Miami peoples, Turtle Island 

• Jeannette Bastian, Professor Emerita, Simmons University, Turtle Island

• Sindiso Bhebhe, Lecturer, Charles Sturt University, Australia, the land of the Wiradjuri, Ngunawal, Gundungarra and Biripai peoples.

• Janelle Duke, Archivist, National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago

• Stanley Griffin, Deputy Dean, Undergraduate Studies (Humanities), University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica

• Heather MacNeil, Professor, University of Toronto, traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River, Turtle Island.

• Tracy Maniapoto, Lecturer, School of Information Management, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Tribal affiliations: Ngā Wairiki, Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Te Wairoa, Ngāti Porou

• Mpho Ngoepe, Professor, University of South Africa

• Maria Cristina Betancur Roldan, Titular Professor, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia, land of the Wayuu, Zenú, Nasa, Pastos, Emberá, Misak, Kogui, Arhuacos, among others.

• Pimphot Seelakate, Lecturer, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

• Eric Stoykovich, College Archivist and Manuscript Librarian, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, land of the Sicaogs, Poquonocks, Wangunks and Tunxis.

• Melissa Taitano, Assistant Professor and Pwo Navigator, University of Guam

• Kirsten Thorpe, Associate Professor, Indigenous Archives and Data Stewardship Hub, Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Cultural affiliations: Worimi People, New South Wales, Australia, working from the land of the Gadigal people.

[1] F. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, Grove Press, 1965

[2] A.L. Stoler “Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance”, Archival Science, 2002; J. Lowry “The Record as Command” in A. Prescott & A. Wiggins (eds.) Archives: Power, Truth and Fiction, Oxford University Press, 2023.

[3] J.J. Ghaddar & J. Lowry “A Documentary Nakba: Syllabus for a Reading Group for Archival Liberation in and beyond Palestine”, unpublished.

[4] J. Lowry & H. MacNeil “Archival Thinking: Genealogies and Archaeologies” in Archival Science, 2021.

[5] For example, J. Drake, “RadTech Meets RadArch: Towards a New Principle for Archives and Archival Description”, Medium, 2016; H.J.M.. Ishmael, “Reclaiming History: Arthur Schomburg”, Archives and Manuscripts, 2018; K. Thorpe, “Transformative Praxis: Building Spaces for Indigenous Self-Determination in Libraries and Archives”, In the Library with the Lead Pipe, 2019, J.J. Ghaddar, “Total Archives for Land, Law and Sovereignty in Settler Canada”, Archival Science 2020, S Griffin, “Value Displaced, Value Re/Claimed: Musings on Reparations, Shared Heritage and Caribbean Archival Records” in J. Lowry (ed.) Disputed Archival Heritage (Routledge, 2022).