Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History

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AuthorAntoinette Burton
PublisherDuke University Press
PublishedOct 17 2007
Book FormatPaperback
ISBN-139780822336778
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CategoriesHistory > Historiography
LanguageEnglish

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Book Description

Despite the importance of archives to the profession of history, there is very little written about actual encounters with them--about the effect that the researcher's race, gender, or class may have on her experience within them or about the impact that archival surveillance, architecture, or bureaucracy might have on the histories that are ultimately written. This provocative collection initiates a vital conversation about how archives around the world are constructed, policed, manipulated, and experienced. It challenges the claims to objectivity associated with the traditional archive by telling stories that illuminate its power to shape the narratives that are found there.

Archive Stories brings together ethnographies of the archival world, most of which are written by historians. Some contributors recount their own experiences. One offers a moving reflection on how the relative wealth and prestige of Western researchers can gain them entry to collections such as Uzbekistan's newly formed Central State Archive, which severely limits the access of Uzbek researchers. Others explore the genealogies of specific archives, from one of the most influential archival institutions in the modern West, the Archives nationales in Paris, to the significant archives of the Bakunin family in Russia, which were saved largely through the efforts of one family member. Still others explore the impact of current events on the analysis of particular archives. A contributor tells of researching the 1976 Soweto riots in the politically charged atmosphere of the early 1990s, just as apartheid in South Africa was coming to an end. A number of the essays question what counts as an archive--and what counts as history--as they consider oral histories, cyberspace, fiction, and plans for streets and buildings that were never built, for histories that never materialized.

Contributors. Tony Ballantyne, Marilyn Booth, Antoinette Burton, Ann Curthoys, Peter Fritzsche, Durba Ghosh, Laura Mayhall, Jennifer S. Milligan, Kathryn J. Oberdeck, Adele Perry, Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, John Randolph, Craig Robertson, Horacio N. Roque Ram�rez, Jeff Sahadeo, Rene� Sentilles

Author Bio

I’m a historian of 19th and 20th century Britain and its empire, with a specialty in colonial India and an ongoing interest in Australasia and Africa. I’ve written on topics ranging from feminism and colonialism to the relationship of empire to the nation and the world. Women, gender and sexuality have always been central to my research, much of which has been concerned with the role of Indian women in the imperial and postcolonial imagination. I’ve edited collections about politics, mobility, postcolonialism and empire and have frequently collaborated with Tony Ballantyne.

At Illinois I have taught courses on modern British history and imperialism, gender and colonialism, autobiography and the archive, approaches and methods and world history. I am currently working on a Bloomsbury series on the cultures of western imperialism and a Duke University Press series on history teaching.

I am currently the director of the campus humanities center, The Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. I am also the Principal Investigator for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant, Humanities Without Walls.

Research Interests

Modern Britain and empire; colonial India; women, gender and feminism; postcolonial studies; world history

Education

B.A. Yale University, 1983
M.A. University of Chicago, 1984
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1990

Source: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign