Skip to Main Content

African American Studies Faculty-Graduate Seminar

This guide includes resources related to the annual African American Studies Faculty-Graduate Seminar.

“Writing the Impossible”: Black Studies and Critical Archival Praxis. 2020–2021

Reena N. Goldthree, Faculty Convener

This seminar explores approaches to archival research in the field of African American studies. Archives, as Michel-Rolph Trouillot reminds us, are not passive repositories of historical materials. Rather, the archive as an institution authorizes particular narratives about the past, while simultaneously rendering other narratives as illegitimate or even “unthinkable”. Working at the intersection of African American studies and critical archival studies, we will interrogate the archive as a site of racialized knowledge production and consider how archival sources inform historical and contemporary understandings of Black life. We will wrestle with the limitations of the archive—the silences, excesses, and (mis)representations—while also engaging with recent scholarship that addresses the methodological, theoretical, and ethical challenges of archival research in innovative ways. In doing so, we will reckon with what Saidiya Hartman characterizes as the “task of writing the impossible,” the effort to reconstruct the stories of Black people from fragmentary traces in the official record. Invited presenters for this yearlong seminar include scholars and archivists working in the fields of literary and cultural studies, anthropology, history, political science, African American studies, and digital humanities.

Speakers

Jim Casey and P. Gabrielle Foreman 

(This resource is related to the work-in-progress P. Gabrielle Foreman presented during the seminar.) 

(This resource is representative of Jim Casey and P. Gabrielle Foreman's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres

(This resource is representative of Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Annette Joseph-Gabriel

(This resource is representative of Annette Joseph-Gabriel's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Lorgia García Peña

(This resource is related to the work-in-progress Lorgia García Peña presented during the seminar.) 

Jessica Marie Johnson

(This resource is representative of Jessica Marie Johnson's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Minkah Makalani

(This resource is representative of Minkah Makalani's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Shana L. Redmond

(This resource is related to the work-in-progress Shana L. Redmond presented during the seminar.) 

  • Redmond, Shana L., "Jubilee: The (Positive) Science of Black Music", in Anna Harwell Celenza (ed.), Music and Human Flourishing (New York, 2023; online edn, Oxford Academic, 23 Mar. 2023.) https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197646748.003.0003.

Matthew J. Smith

(This resource is representative of Matthew J. Smith's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.) 

Quito Swan

(This resource is related to the scholarship Quito Swan presented during the seminar.) 

Erica Williams

(This resource is representative of Erica Williams's scholarship and relates to the seminar theme.)