Session Abstract

This panel proposes a deep conversation about opening ourselves to other disciplinary approaches to reading the silences of the archive.  As historians we seek to ask new questions or to reframe our questions in new ways, yet the archives themselves were constructed in order to produce and house certain types of narratives, excluding or marginalizing others.  At times this is a function of the state and its policies; at other times it is a more innocent artifact of past ways of seeing and thinking.  Via a series of conversations which will begin prior to the AHA in January, we seek to push ourselves theoretically, methodologically, and substantively to find new kinds of archives; to borrow from other disciplines, times and places; and to know when we have gone too far or not far enough.  The five panelists will each present a short statement (with audio visual materials) and then open it up to a conversation with the audience and each other.