The particular session I attended was entitled, \u201cEmerging Perspectives on Public Memory and Popular Representations of Anti-Black Violence<\/em>.\u201d The conversation was introduced by Jennifer DeClue<\/a>, Assistant Professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College, who also presented original research and moderated the subsequent discussion.[1]<\/a> Other panelists included Dr. Tyler Perry<\/a>, Assistant Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Dr. Allison Page<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Old Dominion University. Because the material presented in DeClue\u2019s presentation was especially interesting to me, I\u2019ve decided to focus exclusively on that here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The title of DeClue\u2019s presentation was \u201cStaging Slavery: Public Television and the Performance of Slave Narratives<\/em>.\u201d Her discussion centered on \u201cThe History of the Negro People<\/a><\/em>,\u201d a 9-part televison series which aired on the public television network NET (now PBS) in 1965. The series explored lesser known narratives of black people in America and throughout the world, featuring episodes on ancient African civilizations, the racial history of the American south, and the experience of black people in Brazil, among other topics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The episode discussed by DeClue is simply titled \u201cSlavery.\u201d Included in it are staged dramatizations of slavery that emphasize resistance; significantly, these dramatizations were based on the actual stories of enslaved people in America. The testimonies used in \u201cSlavery\u201d were collected as part of FDR\u2019s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in the 1920s. Though the WPA is mostly remembered for grand-scale public works projects like the construction of highways and buildings, it also included the Federal Writers Project, which facilitated the collection of American folklore and oral histories. As DeClue put it, a \u201cdatabase\u201d of oral histories by formerly enslaved people was amassed through these efforts. The \u201craw material” embodied in these histories was then reanimated through the dramatic performances described by DeClue, and given a national audience through the medium of public television. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As previously mentioned, \u201cSlavery\u201d primarily highlighted instances of resistance to slaveholders and the institution of slavery itself. The episode included re-tellings of the stories of infamous rebels Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and John Brown, as well as narratives of lesser known enslaved people who dared challenge the “peculiar institution.” In chronicling American slavery through the lens of resistance and using the words of people who endured it, the episode marks an \u201cintervention into the dominant narrative of slavery,\u201d shifting our public memory of slavery away from narratives of servility and complacency and towards tales of humanity and resilience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The excerpts from \u201cSlavery\u201d that DeClue played for the audience highlight the potency of archives, as well as their insurrectionary potential. More specifically, they demonstrate that archives contain material that can be used to disrupt dominant understandings of history and uplift the narratives of marginalized people. As the Schwartz and Cook reading we were assigned earlier this semester suggests, archives have tremendous power in shaping our collective memory and identity, and can be used as tools to promote hegemony or<\/em> resistance, depending on the materials available and the objectives of those who use them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n At one point, DeClue mentioned that Federal Writers Project employees discovered that former slaves were less likely to be as forthcoming with white interviewers as they were with black ones. This unsurprising fact demonstrates that the archival record is anything but an unmediated collection of stories and documents. Rather, the records available to us today were shaped \u2014 implicitly and explicitly \u2014 by the people in positions to receive, create, and preserve them. As DeClue reminded us, it’s remarkable that so many powerful and subversive stories were collected by this project, given that most interviewers were white and were thus received less comfortably by black storytellers. What might this archival record look like if only black people collected these histories? <\/p>\n\n\n\n In closing out her presentation, Jennifer brought up the avant-garde short film \u201cAn Ecstatic Experience<\/a>,\u201d <\/em>created by Brooklyn-based artist and filmmaker Ja\u2019Tovia Gary<\/a>. The film repurposes footage from \u201cSlavery,\u201d overlaying etchings, drawings, and other markings over images from the 1965 segment. In manipulating this footage, Gary added yet another \u201clayer\u201d to the archive and underscored the fact that archival materials evolve over time and in response to current understandings of the issues they embody and reflect. I found it exciting (and a bit dizzying) to try and peel back the archival \u201clayers\u201d included in DeClue\u2019s presentation. For one, there are the narratives collected by the Federal Writers Project \u2014 these testimonies themselves comprise a kind of \u201ctransatlantic archive,\u201d as DeClue put it. There is then the archival repository represented in \u201cThe History of the Negro People,\u201d<\/em> now over fifty years old. From there \u201cAn Ecstatic Experience\u201d was born, further commenting on and repurposing the \u201craw material\u201d collected by the Federal Writers Project in the 1920s. Finally, there is DeClue\u2019s own analysis of these \u201clayers,\u201d which has already been digitally archived on Vimeo<\/a>, in addition to my own commentary on her recent discussion, now archived on WordPress. These various \u201clayers\u201d enliven my understanding of archival “provenance” as introduced in the Caswell reading assigned earlier this semester. They show how records and archives are far from static, but rather unfold over decades and in conversation with the past and present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Works referenced \/ cited: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Bly, L., & Wooten, K. (Eds.). (2012). Make your own history: Documenting feminist and queer activism in the 21st century<\/em>. Los Angeles, CA: Litwin Books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caswell, M. L. (2016). \u201c’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.\u201d Reconstruction<\/em>, 16 (1), 1-12. Retrieved from: https:\/\/escholarship.org\/uc\/item\/7bn4v1fk<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Schwartz, J. M., & Cook, T. (2002). Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory. Archival Science<\/em>, 2(1\u20132), 1\u201319. Retrieved from: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/BF02435628<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/10\/MV5BZGVlZGU5OWQtZWYyMi00YzJlLWExMDAtYmMyNDU2YWEyODE0XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjI3MDczMjI@._V1_-640x1024.jpg\")
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