Evidence, Memory, Identity, and Community
What is the central competing dichotomy in mythologies of the archival profession?
Evidence versus memory
How does Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd (2009) define community?
Any manner of people who come together and present themselves as such
How does Caswell, Cifor and Ramirez define affect?
“Those visceral forces beneath and alongside, feeling and emotion, encompassing the conscious, the semiconscious, and that which is other than conscious knowing.”
What does SAADA stand for?
South Asian American Digital Archive
What material was on the hard drive that became the Daraa archive?
Hundreds of hours of live recordings of protests, activist gatherings, bomb attacks, funerals and testimonies having to do with the Syrian civil war.
What are the four paradigms or frameworks about archiving that have formed our own interior memory of the archiving profession?
Evidence, memory, identity, community
What are marginalized identity-based community archives?
Archives coalescing around a marginalized identity rather than traditional historical societies
What functions of archival practice (there are 3) are reframed to align with community specific priorities and cultural values for community archives?
Appraisal, description and access
What does SAADA do?
Documents, preserves and provides access to the rich history of South Asians in the United States
How much material is included in the Daraa Archive?
12,756 video sequencing (3482 are 'unique')
What archival concepts were designed in order to preserve records as evidence of the functional-structural context and actions that caused their creation? (there are 3)
Respect des fonds, original order, and provenance
What types of identities do community archives materialize around?
Ethnic, racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, physical location
When analyzing the affect of war archives, what first needs to be taken into account?
The emotions of those who created them
In the Spring of 2016, SAADA learned of what materials that were particularly valuable and meaningful to the organization and community?
Home videos from 1959 of a Sikh man and a white woman, their marriage and family.
The main motivation of Yadan Drajy, one of the creators of the archival resources, was what?
To “tell the world this is happening in Syria” To provide evidence and give information.
What was the paradigm of “memory” most concerned with appraising resources as?
Historical sources
What are prime motivating factors for people who volunteer at community archives?
Political activism, community empowerment and social change
Define the concept of “symbolic annihilation” in the field of communications.
The ways members of marginalized groups are absent, under-represented or misrepresented by mainstream media and archives.
Zain Alam was an artist who worked to create a piece for SAADA, what did he create?
"Lavaan", a 9 minute multimedia piece. Specifically, he composed a score for the home video footage composed of historic home movies and contemporary news footage covering white supremacist violence against South Asian Americans
What does citizen-generated images and video convey that traditional global media outlets don’t?
An affective and embodied experience from “inside” the event
Community-based archive involves a shift in core principles from exclusive custodianship of archives to what?
Shared stewardship and collaboration
What 5 principles commonly guide community-based archival work?
Participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, and reflexivity
Community archives have ontological, epistemological and social impact on communities. What are these impacts in simple terms?
I am here
We were here
We belong here
What does SAADA’s First Days Project attempt to record?
Immigrants to record brief narratives about their first 48 hours in the US
As Drajy and others documented the events in Syria, what purposes did they realize they were hoping to accomplish? (i.e. what categories of information where they trying to preserve)
Witnessing the present historic moment.
Repository of shared memory of the people and places obliterated by the viciousness of the war.
A desire to record “the truth” as Drajy called it