Apologies for cross-posting:
Join us next Wednesday, November 16 for the second event of the
Antiracism & Decolonization in Archival Studies: Open Classroom Series hosted at the University of Manitoba’s History Dept., and sponsored by Dalhousie’s School of Information Management and CUNY’s Archival Technologies Lab. These open classrooms are part
of graduate courses taught by Dr. Jamila Ghaddar, which are: HIST7372 History of Archiving & Archival Records (Fall 2022) at the UofM’s History Dept., and INFO6370 Records Management (Winter 2023) at Dalhousie’s SIM.
Register today!
Contact: Dr. Jamila Ghaddar at
[log in to unmask].
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 @ 11:30am CST / 1:30pm AST
“Displaced
Archives, Repatriation & the Vienna Convention: Global South Perspectives”
Panel Featuring:
Panelist biographies are listed
here.
Class readings are listed below and here.
Registration is free and open to all!
Abstract:
Nationally, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC) called
on Canadian archives, museums, and libraries to take up the challenge of decolonization, truth telling and national reconciliation. These calls reflect, among other things,
the fact that the TRC had to take the Government of Canada to court multiple times over access to archives and records. The TRC’s successor body, the
National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, continues to face barriers to archival access to fulfill its vital mandate. Globally, similar archival challenges have been a feature of most truth and
reconciliation initiatives from South Africa to Morocco. Similarly, contestations over archival access and ownership
have been a feature of the relationship between European countries and their former colonies in Africa and Asia because records displaced to Europe in the context of Third World political decolonization in the mid-20th century have rarely been repatriated.
How to imagine a future in which such archival legacies of colonialism are redressed? This open classroom explores this question with renowned personalities and leading experts, Dr. Ellen Namhila (Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Namibia), Dr. Nathan Mnjama
(Professor, Department of Library & Information Studies, University of Botswana), and Dr. James Lowry (Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library & Information Studies, CUNY). Co-hosted by CUNY’s Archival Technologies Lab and Dalhousie University’s
School of Information Management, this open classroom features cases from Namibia and Botswana, alongside consideration of the potential and limits of the
Vienna Convention on the Succession of States with Respect to State Property, Archives & Debt
(1983) to inform and help resolve disputed archival claims between now independent states and their former western colonial rulers.
Class Readings:
·
United Nations (1983)
Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of State Property, Archives and Debts.
·
Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (2004) "Filling the gaps in the archival record of the
Namibian struggle for independence." IFLA Journal 30 (3): 224-230.
·
Ellen Ndeshi Namhila (2015) "Archives of Anti-Colonial Resistance and the Liberation Struggle
(AACRLS): An Integrated Programme to Fill the Colonial Gaps in the Archival Record of Namibia."
Journal for Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences: 168-178.
·
Nathan Mnjama (2016) “Migrated Archives: The African Perspectives.”
Journal of the South African Society of Archivists 48: 45-54.
·
Browse: ACARM (2017)
Migrated Archives: ACARM Position Paper. Adopted at the ACARM Annual
General Meeting, Mexico City.
·
Riley Linebaugh and James Lowry (2021) The archival colour line: race, records and post-colonial custody.
Archives and Records 42(3): 284-303.
·
J.J. Ghaddar (Fall 2022) “Provenance
in Place: Crafting the Vienna Convention for Global Decolonization and Archival Repatriation,” in James Lowry (ed.)
Disputed Archival Heritage, Volume II (New York: Routledge).