Archives Power, Truth, and Fiction

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Archives have never been more complex, expansive, or ubiquitous. Gargantuan in scale and conception yet never sufficient or complete, the archive is on the one hand a space for empowerment and expression and on the other an instrument of constraint and repression. The way in which the archive is structured, made available, and developed plays a central role in how societies define their values and ethics. Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction is a wide-ranging and innovative volume which highlights the vibrancy and urgency of the field by bringing together contributors from many different disciplines and backgrounds, including archivists, historians, literary scholars, digital researchers, and creative practitioners.

The archive of the twenty-first century is a fluid and multi-vocal space that challenges at every point the hegemonic and positivistic assumptions which shaped traditional ideas of the archive. The massive growth of digital archives further complicates the picture. Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction is designed to help the reader draw threads through the rapidly changing and shifting multiverse of archives. The interdisciplinary and international contributors use a wide range of examples, from the Middle Ages to the Windrush scandal, to unsettle preconceptions, encourage debate, and draw out issues generated by the perpetual motion of the archive.

Andrew Prescott, Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Glasgow,Alison Wiggins, Reader in English Language and Manuscripts, University of Glasgow

Andrew Prescott is Professor of Digital Humanities in the School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow. He trained as a medieval historian and was a Curator in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library between 1979 and 2000, where he was the principal curatorial contact for Kevin Kiernan's Electronic Beowulf. Professor Prescott was Theme Leader Fellow for the AHRC strategic theme of Digital Transformations 2012-2019. He has also worked in libraries, archives, and digital humanities units at the University of Sheffield, King's College London, and the University of Wales Lampeter.

Alison Wiggins is Reader in English Language and Manuscripts in the School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow. She has led and collaborated on a range of archive-based digital projects, at the AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters between 2002 and 2006, and then at Glasgow as PI for The Letters of Bess of Hardwick (AHRC 2009-12), as Leadership Fellow for Archives and Writing Lives (AHRC 2017-19), and currently as part of the research team analyzing Adam Smith's Library (Templeton Foundation 2022-24). Dr Wiggins has also developed research and engagement projects with The National Trust, Chatsworth House Archives, The National Archives, The Bodleian Library, and the National Library of Scotland.

List of Illustrations
Abbreviations
Acknowledgements
Notes on Editorial Policy
Notes on Contributors
Foreword by Carolyn Steedman
Introduction by Andrew Prescott and Alison Wiggins
I. Conceptions
1. 'The Archive' is Not An Archives: Acknowledging the Intellectual Contribution of Archival Studies, Michelle Caswell
2. Where and What are the Boundaries of the Archive?, Louise Craven
3. Digitality and Reconfiguring Global Archive(s) of Forced Migration, Hariz Halilovich and Anne J. Gilliland
4. The Record as Command, James Lowry
5. New Memory and The Archive, Andrew Hoskins
6. Response to Conceptions, Niamh Moore
II. Frameworks
7. Appraisal and Original Order: The Power Structures of the Archive, Andrew Prescott
8. Archival Education and Professionalism, Anna Sexton
9. Metadata, Lisa Gitelman
10. Networks, Ruth Ahnert and Sebastian E. Ahnert
11. Authenticating and Evaluating Evidence, Michael Moss and David Thomas
12. More Content, Less Context: Rethinking Access, Victoria Van Hyning and Heather Wolfe
13. Response to Frameworks, Janet Foster
III. Materialities
14. The Materiality of Written Textual Forms, Alison Wiggins
15. Sound and Vision: The Audio-Visual Archive, Simon Popple
16. Doors Into the Archives: Material Objects and Document Collections, Catherine Richardson
17. Archives, Art, and the Performativity of Practice, Jane Birkin
18. Digital Innovation and Archival Thinking, Eirini Goudarouli
19. Response to Materialities, Laura Mandell
IV. Encounters & Evolution
20. The Agency of Archivers, Eric Ketelaar
21. State Power and the Shaping of Archives in Malawi, Paul Lihoma
22. Archival Impulses and the Gunpowder Plot, Paul Strohm
23. Accidentally on Purpose: Denying Any Responsibility for the Accidental Archive, Nadine Akkerman and Pete Langman
24. Response to Encounters & Evolution, Julie A. Fisher
V. Narrators
25. From Repositories of Failure to Archives of Abolition, Karina Beras and Jarrett Martin Drake
26. Writer-Editors Making the Haitian and Caribbean Archives Talk, Rachel Douglas
27. Finding Women in the Archives of 1381, Sylvia Federico
28. On Family History and Archives, Norma Clarke
29. An Artist Unpacks the Archives, Ruth Maclennan
30. Response to Narrators, Alan Stewart
VI. Erasures & Exclusion
31. America's Scrapbook: A Reckoning in the Archives, Lae'l Hughes-Watkins
32. Irreconcilable Archives: Queer Collections and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Rebecca Kahn
33. Destruction and Displacement: The 2003 War and the Struggle for Iraq's Records, Rebecca Abby Whiting
34. Of Bonfires, Mindsets, and Policies: The Multi-Causal Matrix of Silence in Ghanaian Public Archives, Edwina Ashie-Nikoi, Emmanuel Adjei, and Musah Adams
35. Response to Erasures & Exclusion, Kirsten Weld
Afterword by Verne Harris
Index