Amplifying 300+ years of resistance in the archives, preserving records of today's acts of resistance
It’s amazing what twisting paths spiders can lead us on if we let them. Several months ago I started checking out the biographies of the women captured with Louise in a 1935 Chicago Defender photo with the headline “They Are …
As a December 1st deadline approached, I was talking with another Chronicling Resistance Fellow about the challenge of fulfilling the assignment of identifying at least 10 objects from PACSCL institutions that would be included in the culminating exhibition of our …
I’m delighted when the themes and personalities that surface in my research reappear in unexpected places, both in the archives and in current arts and cultural happenings. That was my reaction when, a few weeks ago, I was at the …
I am unavailable for servitude. I refuse it.
These words, from Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals (New York: W.W. Norton 2019, p. 299), encapsulate what I imagine was …
Of “Spectral Infrastructure”
I’ve been pondering a couple of ideas about the limitations of archives that were sparked by two recent webinars. The first of these provocations occurred back in April 2021 when I tuned in to a symposium organized …
A spider sure knows how to ensnare the unexpected in its web.
A friend received from her sister a discarded library book titled Illustrated Tap Rhythms And Routines by Edith Ballwebber, an Assistant Professor of Physical Education teaching at the …
What does Louise tell us about herself in what appears to be the only existing professional photo of her? What clues are there in her attire, her make-up, her facial expression, her stance, or in her inscription to dancer Ludie …