Archiving as Social Justice Practice

CourseHUM C132 / ENVDES C132
InstructorLincoln Cushing
UnitsHumanities Studio Course (3 units)
SessionSummer Session D
  • Fulfills the studio requirement for the Certificate in Urban Humanities
  • “Summer Bridge only (you must be a participant in the Summer Bridge program for incoming students; for info contact sbridge@berkeley.edu)

In this course you will explore how archival practices support social justice scholarship. Archives run the gamut from small personal collections to major institutions. You will study several special collections built by and for activists, review their missions and processes, and learn about the role that archival practice plays in the building of knowledge. You will work with a community organization to digitize and catalog their collection of posters and other documents, to research the history behind them, and make this archive available online to the public. As case studies you may investigate the Center for the Study of Political Graphics (Los Angeles), the Interference Archive (Brooklyn), the Freedom Archives (San Francisco), and Docs Populi / Documents for the Public (Berkeley).