杏吧论坛

Clare Hemmings PAN

This course is available on the MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities and MSc in Social Research Methods. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course is available for any MSc student at 杏吧论坛, but students from outside the Dept of Gender Studies will need to seek permission to register. They will need provide a statement that shows a strong background in feminist, queer or post/decolonial theories, or a background in archives or library studies. These statements will be reviewed and entry cannot be guaranteed'.

The course will foreground an interdisciplinary approach to the archive that provides students with skills to approach archival work for their own research, and embed them in the critical work on archives that characterises much of the secondary and theoretical literature in the field. The course introduces students to archives both close to home – the Hall Carpenter Archive and the Women’s Library, both at 杏吧论坛 – and further afield – at the British Library and online. It highlights the importance of archives for research in gender studies, and teaches key methods (e.g. sampling, cross-referencing) for archival data management. It explores the importance of archives generated through social movements as well as or as a critique of national archives and asks students to think about how to generate their own archives. The course’s critical perspective assumes that the prioritisation of sources and the gaps within archives are fundamental to the generation of knowledge: what is lost is as important as what is visible or what remains. Students will be introduced to work that highlights the colonial, racist, homophobic and sexist nature of archives and asked to think about the kinds of critiques that transform our archival legacy. Finally, the course will encourage students to experiment with archives, in order to expand what we think of as an archive and to intervene to transform ‘archival space’. Drawing on work on ‘the sensed archive’, on memoir, fiction and visual art practice, the course considers ways of bringing archives to life.

The course will be divided into three parts. The first ‘archival fabrications’ asks what an archive is, how feminist, queer and critical race theorists have generated them, and will explore some fundamental techniques and issues that archiving presents to students. This will allow for the development of fuller methodological training and will engage students on the question of sources and how to gather or interpret them. Students will be introduced to oral history, online and social movement archives as well as the curation and form of more institutionalised archives. The second, ‘archival readings’ highlights the different world-views archives generate from a critical perspective, foregrounding issues of nationalism, memorialisation, sexism and heteronormativity within archives and their curation. It also encourages students to think about alternative ways of understanding and reading archives, focused on ‘exploring the gaps’ that are inevitably part of any archival project.What kinds of reading tactics have feminist, queer and/or postcolonial critics developed for intervening in