The Pembroke Center Archives hosts recurring symposia questioning the relationship between archives and the production of knowledge. This page documents those events and those who participated as speakers.

For information about the Shauna M. Stark '76, Out of Archives Lecture Series, please see its webpage.

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PAST SYMPOSIA

Friday, March 10, 2017
10:30 am - 5:00 pm
Pembroke Hall 305
172 Meeting Street, Providence RI 

This conference explored the importance of collecting materials relevant to the history of women and of the history of feminist thought. Attendees discovered what goes into the making of a world-class archive and the many surprising and important uses to which archives can be put.

Keynote address, "Archives of Possibility," provided by Marianne Hirsch '70, AM '70, PHD '75, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Columbia University

Panel Discussions - Building the Archive: Alumnae/i and scholars discussed items they donated (from book manuscripts to interviews to photos) and why they matter for creating new histories of Brown, of women, and of the scholarly conversations women have led and shaped.

 Panel Discussion - Using the Archive: Alumnae/i and scholars who have conducted research in the archive discussed what they found in the archives and what is at stake for scholarship and community programming in having such materials available for public use.

Concluding Remarks by Karen Newman, Owen Walker '33 Professor of Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature and English, Brown University

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The Colonial Archive Symposium is dedicated to the question of the relationship between colonialism and the order of knowledge.

Friday, September 19, 2014
2:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Pembroke Hall, 305
172 Meeting Street  

Natalie Zemon Davis, University of Toronto
Seeking Slaves in the Colonial Archive

Itohan Osayimwese, Brown University
Colonialism and the Archive of Modern Architecture in Germany

Ann Laura Stoler, The New School
Retracking Colonial Archives: On Political and Conceptual Labor

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, New York University
Respondent

Artists as Archivists, The Radha May Collective:

Nupur Mathur, Artist/Researcher
Bathsheba Okwenje, Artist/Researcher
Elisa Giardina Papa,  Brown University/RISD

Click here to view the poster.

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October 25, 2013

Marc Giai-Miniet, Ascenseur"Material Encounters in the Archive" frames a dialogue between four interdisciplinary feminist scholars whose research addresses the potential, as well as the limits, of the archive as a theoretical and physical site of knowledge production. Our speakers will reflect on how engaging with archival objects -- as collectors, curators, and researchers -- has shaped their understanding of the archive, not only as a repository for extant documents but as a productive apparatus that shapes the contours of what is valued as legitimate information and scholarship. The presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion, Q&A, and reception.

Click here to view the poster.

Participants:

	Anjali Arondekar The Kala of the Archive:  Sexuality, Historiography, South Asia Anjali Arondekar is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Literature at University of California, Santa Cruz. She is author of For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive, winner of the 2010 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award for best book in lesbian, gay, or queer studies in literature and cultural studies.
	Ariella Azoulay Sov-Reign/Sub-Reign Archives:  Tracing the Figure of the Infiltrator Ariella Azoulay is a scholar, curator and documentary filmmaker who joined the Brown faculty in Modern Culture and Media in 2013. Her recent books include The Civil Contract of Photography (2008), From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950 (2011), and Civil Imagination: The Political Ontology of Photography (2012).
	Kate Eichhorn The Archive Function: The Critic's Lost Thesis on the Archive Kate Eichhorn is Assistant Professor of Culture and Media at The New School, Eugene Lang College. Her book The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order, was released by Temple University Press in 2013.
	Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg Comment Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg is Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian Studies at Brown. Her publications include Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin-de-Siecle (1998), The Pinocchio Effect: On Making Italians (2007), and Impious Fidelity: Anna Freud, Psychoanalysis, Politics (2012).