CAST 313 - Archives and Affects

FC ARHU WINT

4 credits
We often think of archives as repositories, usually housed in special collections of libraries but also increasingly transferred to digital servers, that collect books, papers, and other objects to help piece together a historical record. In this class, we will ask how we might expand that conception of the archive by engaging with ephemeral archives, or the “repertoire”, alongside notions of everyday archives and the body as archive. In so doing, we will also expand our thinking about what can be done with archives and their objects through affective, or complex emotional engagement, with memory and history. This course is a study in archive theory, affect theory, and (queer) object relations. Students will keep journals on object lessons and will experiment in different writing genres that will help them approach the archive from multiple critical perspectives. We will also focus our inquiry on populations that have historically been left out of major national archives, including queer and trans people and POC.
This course is cross-listed with GSFS 313