Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Sustaining and Engaging Appalachian Communities through Innovative Approaches to the Archive
Session Abstract or Summary
Session Summary: “Sustaining and Engaging Appalachian Communities through Innovative Approaches to the Archive”
Appalachian scholars and archivists in recent years have made significant strides researching and documenting the lives of marginalized Appalachians whose lives too often have escaped scholarly attention. This sessions consists of three presentations that illuminate innovative approaches and practices relevant to documenting the lives of Appalachians who live in communities (e.g., economically poor communities, communities inhabited largely by ethnic and racial minorities; women) marginalized by standard archival collecting practices. The session will define the western archive based on a positivist philosophy that determined collecting practices, and will explore alternative ideas and practices applicable to community archives and to documenting the often hidden lives of the marginalized.
Topics: archival representation; gender; labor history; ethnicity.
Presentation #1 Title
Uncovering the Marginalized Voice in the Community Archive
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Defining the archive in the Western tradition is an ongoing process with a complicated history. Equally as difficult is defining the nature of archival documents. The commonality linking the archive and archival documents can be traced to the positivist tradition of the nineteenth century and its influence on the beginnings of archival science. In this positivist tradition priority is placed on the elites and the non-elites are often marginalized. In recent decades scholars have turned away from this positivist tradition in search of the voice of those customarily marginalized within the archive and archival records. Jeannette Bastian, in her work on community archives in the Caribbean, writes that archival documents often “speak for those whose voices are otherwise silent” (2003, 2). Other scholars have made abundant use of community archives in Appalachian repositories to unravel the history and impact of events such as those related to labor history or to the papers of the elite within the region, but closer examination of these regional documents often reveal information regarding those within the community that were traditionally marginalized. Community archives, Jimmy Zavala and his colleagues argue, “challenge hierarchical structures of governance found in mainstream archival institutions” because they possess more autonomy than larger archives (2017, 11). This paper will focus on the community archive in the Western tradition, discovering those marginalized in archival documents, and the community archive as a space for the counter narratives of these people who are often excluded from the archive.
References
Bastian, Jeannette Allis. 2003. Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost its Archives
and Found its History. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Zavala, Jimmy, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. 2017.
“‘A Process Where we’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists 45, no. 3: 202-15. https://do1.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1377088
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Julie Fox-Horton is an Assistant Professor in Continuing Studies at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee. Her research interests include archival history, the archive as a space, and digital archives. Currently, she is developing a course on digital archiving for the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS), Archival Studies Concentration, and the MALS Gradaute Certiciate in Archival Studies at ETSU. She holds a PhD in medieval history from the University Kentucky. Contact: foxhorton@etsu.edu
Presentation #2 Title
Using Reappraisal to Recover Women’s Voices Hidden in Male-Centric Collections
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
For forty years, scholars have called on archivists to reappraise existing holdings in search of women’s materials long hidden in the collections of their husbands, brothers, fathers or other male relatives. Nathalie Belkin writes, “Archivist bias is a large problem in the collection development and decision process of all archives, but it is especially prevalent among archives preserving women’s history” (2015, 37). Archivists hold significant power in the making of women’s memory. Karen M. Mason and Tanya Zanish-Belcher allude to this power writing, “women’s collections archivists preserve the history of women and help women create, re-create, and own their memories” (2007, 357). Archivists stand poised to uncover an unprecedented wealth of women’s contributions currently hidden in existing male-centric collections. For example, at the Archives of Appalachia, the nearly thirty-year-old Joe Jennings Collection contained the writings and other personal materials of his wife Aubry hidden among his federal records without folder titles or descriptions related to Aubry’s private life. Instead, the archivist placed Aubry’s materials under subject headings related to Joe Jennings and his government activities, without describing or even naming Aubry in the finding aid and collection title. These biased archival decisions rooted in positivist tradition rendered the documentation of Aubry’s experiences inaccessible, effectively hidden in the collection and ultimately hidden in the archive. This paper describes how reappraisal empowered me to apply new archival decisions to the documentation of Aubry’s experiences and points to the power of archivists to uncover counter-narratives in Appalachian communities.
References
Belkin, Nathalie. 2015. “If We Were Without A History: The Preservation of Women’s History—Collection, Development, & Continuing Importance.” Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists 33 no. 1, available at http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/provenance/vol33/iss1/8
Mason, Karen M. and Tanya Zanish-Belcher. 2007. “Raising the Archival Consciousness: How Women’s Archives Challenge Traditional Approaches to Collecting, and Use, Or, What’s in a Name?” Library Trends, 56, no. 2: 344-359.https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2008.0003
Joe Jennings Bureau of Indian Affairs Records, Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
D. Jean Rushing is the Assistant Archivist at the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where she has worked full time since early 2017. She holds an MA in History and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, with a concentration in Archival Studies, both from East Tennessee State University. Her role at the archives is to provide Reference; she also works with processing family papers as time allows. Her primary research interest is exploring archival bias in traditional methodology and the need for reappraisal and reprocessing of older collections.
Contact: rushingd@etsu.edu
Presentation #3 Title
Hidden Archives in Appalachia
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
"Hidden archives," Katrina Powell explains, consist of unofficial records or "alternative ledgers" created by local and anecdotal knowledge that helps create counter or alternative narratives of persons either excluded from records created by those in power or included only as "objects" of power (2018, 26-27). This presentation will focus on three examples of the power of hidden archives to uncover the lives of persons marginalized in the space of power that is the official archive. The first example concerns Mary Frances Corbin, a woman committed in 1942 to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, located near Lynchburg. Powell and filmmaker Richard Robins researched her life and relied extensively on alternative ledgers. The second example centers on the members of Linda Tate's extended family, as she documents in her work Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative. Tate found that official records excluded her family members and that hidden archives yielded valuable information on the family’s history. The third example concerns selected striking workers at the American Bemberg and American Glanzstoff (later North American Rayon) rayon plants in Elizabethton, Tennessee, in 1929. Alternative ledgers will provide a counter narrative to the managment-produced “List of Undesirables,” a listing of workers who participated in the strikes.
Powell and Tate’s works serve as examples of the ways in which scholars have used alternative ledgers (in conjunction with official ledgers) to bring to light the history of those alienated from power (that is, the mentally challenged and the indigenous) in a region often alienated from power, while analysis of “The List of Undesirables” and its production, alongside research and analysis of other sources of information on persons named on the list provides an alternative to the official descriptions included in the list.
References
Powell, Katrina. 2018. “Hidden Archives: Revealing Untold Stories.” Journal of American Studies 52: 26-44. https://www.cambridge.org/core
Tate, Linda. 2009. Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
“List of Undesirables.” 1929. North American Rayon and American Bemberg Records. Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Marie Tedesco directs the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies program at East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee. Included among her teaching responsibilities is a course on archival history, theory, and issues. She also has co-edited with Connie Rice Women of the Mountain South: Identity, Work, and Activism (2015) and has written on labor history in Southern Appalachia. She holds a PhD in US history from Georgia State University. Contact: tedescom@etsu.edu
Uncovering the Marginalized Voice in the Community Archive
Defining the archive in the Western tradition is an ongoing process with a complicated history. Equally as difficult is defining the nature of archival documents. The commonality linking the archive and archival documents can be traced to the positivist tradition of the nineteenth century and its influence on the beginnings of archival science. In this positivist tradition priority is placed on the elites and the non-elites are often marginalized. In recent decades scholars have turned away from this positivist tradition in search of the voice of those customarily marginalized within the archive and archival records. Jeannette Bastian, in her work on community archives in the Caribbean, writes that archival documents often “speak for those whose voices are otherwise silent” (2003, 2). Other scholars have made abundant use of community archives in Appalachian repositories to unravel the history and impact of events such as those related to labor history or to the papers of the elite within the region, but closer examination of these regional documents often reveal information regarding those within the community that were traditionally marginalized. Community archives, Jimmy Zavala and his colleagues argue, “challenge hierarchical structures of governance found in mainstream archival institutions” because they possess more autonomy than larger archives (2017, 11). This paper will focus on the community archive in the Western tradition, discovering those marginalized in archival documents, and the community archive as a space for the counter narratives of these people who are often excluded from the archive.
References
Bastian, Jeannette Allis. 2003. Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost its Archives
and Found its History. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited.
Zavala, Jimmy, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. 2017.
“‘A Process Where we’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists 45, no. 3: 202-15. https://do1.org/10.1080/01576895.2017.1377088
