Module Directory

Who controls the raw materials of History? Historians depend on archives: for manuscripts, printed and digitised documents, photographs and images, textiles, oral histories, film and many other types of source. It's only relatively recently, however, that we've started to look 'behind the catalogues' to critically examine the systems and structures of actual archives as specific sites of practice and to question the power relationships they preserve and/or hide.

This module asks questions about what's been collected and how it's been organised, what's got 'lost', destroyed or withheld, and how and why records have been used, neglected and 'discovered'. It's also about whose voices and stories get included and excluded and why.

The aims of this module are:

• To ensure that students have a foundational understanding of how archives are made, organised and run and of archive studies as a scholarly field


• To support students in developing the appropriate skills to be able to critique archival apparatus, such as online catalogues, finding aids and online information


• To enhance students’ understanding of how ‘power’ and its absence shape archives and how historians can ask more sophisticated questions about the archives they use


• To enable students to use concepts from and debates within the field of archive studies and history to critically examine case studies of archives as sites of power


• To give students experience of working with a specific archive on a task defined by a practising archivist relating to the theme of power [option 2 assignment]

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of principles, practices and current debates in the archive profession


2. Show awareness of the key concepts and debates in the scholarly field of archive studies and how these relate to the theme of power


3. Critically appraise the apparatus of an archive and articulate their findings accurately, succinctly and lucidly


4. Critically examine case studies of archives as sites of power


5. Ask sophisticated questions about how archives are made and operate


6. Demonstrate an ability to respond in a professional way to a task set by an archive service and reflect on the process [practice-based output assignment]

This module flips our perspective as researchers. We'll start from the other side of the enquiry desk, working towards a critical understanding of what archivists do, how archives are made and operate and how power is built into their structures.

Records are always political and their use and abuse can have serious, sometimes catastrophic, human consequences (as we've seen in the recent Windrush scandal) – but they can also empower people, aid the pursuit of justice and foster a sense of community. So we'll also look at case studies to give us new insights into archives as sites of power.

As this module spans theory and practice, you’ll have a choice in your final assignment to do an essay or a practice-based output based on a real commission from a practising archivist.

This module is divided into 4 blocks:

• Making archives
  Over the first 3 weeks we will start to consider how power is built into the structure of archives and what archivists do: how records are selected, catalogued, weeded and made accessible (or not); what issues and challenges they face; how different kinds of archive service work.

• Archives as sites of power
  This block consists of three case-studies. The following is an indicative list:
  
  
  
  • Recovering histories of bisexuality in the Hall-Carpenter Archives.
  
  
  • 'Let the word read and know': underground archives of the Holocaust.
  
  
  • Institutional forgetting and immigration policy: the Windrush generation.
  
  
  • Operation Legacy: document destruction and decolonisation.
  
  
  • Top Secret: MI5 records.
  
  
  • The Boston Tapes: documenting the stories of ex-paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
  
  
  • Business archives and 'difficult' pasts.
  
  
  
  

• Unmaking and remaking archives
  In this block, we'll look at ways to read archives against the grain of power – filling the gaps and silences – and at efforts to 'queer' the archive and to create new kinds of archives as a form of activism and resistance. We'll also consider the role of archives created as part of public inquiries/tribunals.

• Class choice case study
  In the final two weeks, we will work together on a longer case study, chosen by the class based on the discussions and research we've done over the preceding weeks.

This module will be delivered via:

1. One two-hour workshop per week.

All Module information will be available via Moodle. Key readings will be digitised an available on Talis Aspire