Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace

Description

Women’s letters and memoirs were until recently considered to have little historical significance. Many of these materials have disappeared or remain unarchived, often dismissed as ephemera and relegated to basements, attics, closets, and, increasingly, cyberspace rather than public institutions. This collection showcases the range of critical debates that animate thinking about women’s archives in Canada.

The essays in Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace consider a series of central questions: What are the challenges that affect archival work about women in Canada today? What are some of the ethical dilemmas that arise over the course of archival research? How do researchers read and make sense of the materials available to them? How does one approach the shifting, unstable forms of new technologies? What principles inform the decisions not only to research the lives of women but to create archival deposits? The contributors focus on how a supple research process might allow for greater engagement with unique archival forms and critical absences in narratives of past and present.

From questions of acquisition, deposition, and preservation to challenges related to the interpretation of material, the contributors track at various stages how fonds are created (or sidestepped) in response to national and other imperatives and to feminist commitments; how archival material is organized, restricted, accessed, and interpreted; how alternative and immediate archives might be conceived and approached; and how exchanges might be read when there are peculiar lacunae—missing or fragmented documents, or gaps in communication—that then require imaginative leaps on the part of the researcher.

Sujets

• Archival research
• Life writing

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554584307
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace
LIFE WRITING SERIES
In the Life Writing Series, Wilfrid Laurier University Press publishes life writing and new life-writing criticism and theory in order to promote autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters, and testimonials written and/or told by women and men whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives. The Series features accounts written in English, or translated into English from French or the languages of the First Nations, or any of the languages of immigration to Canada.
From its inception, Life Writing has aimed to foreground the stories of those who may never have imagined themselves as writers or as people with lives worthy of being (re)told. Its readership has expanded to include scholars, youth, and avid general readers both in Canada and abroad. The Series hopes to continue its work as a leading publisher of life writing of all kinds, as an imprint that aims for both broad representation and scholarly excellence, and as a tool for both historical and autobiographical research.
As its mandate stipulates, the Series privileges those individuals and communities whose stories may not, under normal circumstances, find a welcoming home with a publisher. Life Writing also publishes original theoretical investigations about life writing, as long as they are not limited to one author or text.
Series Editor Marlene Kadar Humanities Division, York University
Manuscripts to be sent to Lisa Quinn, Acquisitions Editor Wilfrid Laurier University Press 75 University Avenue West Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3C5, Canada
Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace

Explorations in Canadian Women s Archives
LINDA M. MORRA and JESSICA SCHAGERL , editors
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Basements and attics, closets and cyberspace : explorations in Canadian women s archives / Linda M. Morra and Jessica Schagerl, editors.
(Life writing series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued also in electronic formats. ISBN 978-1-55458-632-5
1. Women-Canada-Archives. 2. Women-Canada-Archival resources. 3. Archives-Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Archivists-Canada. I. Morra, Linda M. II. Schagerl, Jessica, 1975-III. Series: Life writing series
HQ1453.B374 2012 305.40971 C2012-900194-5
---
Electronic monograph in PDF format. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-1-55458-650-9 (PDF).-ISBN 978-1-55458-887-9(EPUB)
1. Women-Canada-Archives. 2. Women-Canada-Archival resources. 3. Archives-Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Archivists-Canada. I. Morra, Linda M. II. Schagerl, Jessica, 1975- III. Series: Life writing series (Online)
HQ1453.B374 2012 305.40971 C2012-900195-3
2012 Wilfrid Laurier University Press Waterloo, Ontario, Canada www.wlupress.wlu.ca
Cover design by David Drummond using an image from Shutterstock. Text design by Daiva Villa, Chris Rowat Design.
The poem Stuff, on page v, is reprinted from Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New (Black Moss Press, 2010), by Susan McMaster. Reproduced with permission of the poet.
This book is printed on FSC recycled paper and is certified Ecologo. It is made from 100% post-consumer fibre, processed chlorine free, and manufactured using biogas energy.
Printed in Canada
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit http://www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Stuff
When I was young I gave all my secrets to you, spilling over in great armfuls, messy slops of unmanageable entrails, rags and boxes, piles and tail-ends of rolling milling bits that kept tumbling from my fingers worse than handfuls and handfuls of marbles-here, I said, here, I can t contain these any more, my bags are stuffed and splitting, the zippers completely shot, I have no cupboards with doors that close, they re stuck in their guides, gummed up with leftovers, my drawers jam open, scatter underwear torn and stained-help me, I said, I can t hold on, please take me in hand, clean and sweep and dump or at least pile away all my messy leavings on your own ordered shelves-
And you rolled up your sleeves-
So why this residue? Twenty years later, the secrets you swept up, dumped into the trash, like bleach and old paint keep seeping back, the anger you burned still hangs in the air, opens blisters inside if we breathe too deep.
Now it s you who sits slumped, hands spread wide- Your turn, you say, your job this time-
Time for finer siftings to separate simple rot from what will always cut, time to grind up, melt down, discard the useless at last.
Time to make room-my turn to make room for you.
- Susan McMaster
Contents
Introduction: No Archive Is Neutral
Linda M. Morra and Jessica Schagerl
I. Reorientations
Of Mini-Ships and Archives
Daphne Marlatt
Finding Indian Maidens on eBay: Tales of the Alternative Archive (and More Tales of White Commodity Culture)
Cecily Devereux
Faster Than a Speeding Thought : Lemon Hound s Archive Unleashed
Karis Shearer and Jessica Schagerl
I remember I was wearing leather pants : Archiving the Repertoire of Feminist Cabaret in Canada
T. L. Cowan
In the hope of making a connection : Rereading Archival Bodies, Responses, and Love in Marian Engel s Bear and Alice Munro s Meneseteung
Catherine Bates
An Archive of Complicity: Ethically (Re)Reading the Documentaries of Nelofer Pazira
Hannah McGregor
Psyche and Her Helpers, under Cloud Cover
Penn Kemp
II. Restrictions
Archival Matters
Sally Clark
Keeping the Archive Door Open: Writing about Florence Carlyle
Susan Butlin
The Oral, the Archive, and Ethics: Canadian Women Writers Telling It
Andrea Beverley
Halted by the Archive: The Impact of Excessive Archival Restrictions on Scholars
Ruth Panofsky and Michael Moir
Personal Ethics: Being an Archivist of Writers
Catherine Hobbs
Invisibility Exhibit: The Limits of Library and Archives Canada s Multicultural Mandate
Karina Vernon
III. Responsibilities
Rat in the Box: Thoughts on Archiving My Stuff
Susan McMaster
Letters to the Woman s Page Editor: Reading Francis Marion Beynon s The Country Homemakers and a Public Culture for Women
Katja Thieme
Archival Adventures with L. M. Montgomery; or, As Long as the Leaves Hold Together
Vanessa Brown and Benjamin Lefebvre
The Quality of the Carpet: A Consideration of Anecdotes in Researching Women s Lives
Linda M. Morra
I want my story told : The Sheila Watson Archive, the Reader, and the Search for Voice
Paul Tiessen
You can do with all this rambling whatever you want : Scrutinizing Ethics in the Alzheimer s Archives
Kathleen Venema
Locking Up Letters
Julia Creet
Afterword
Janice Fiamengo
Contributors
Index
Introduction: No Archive Is Neutral
Linda M. Morra and Jessica Schagerl
Basements and Attics, Closets and Cyberspace is, first and foremost, about researching the archives created by, about, and for Canadian women. This book asks questions about the theories, methodologies, and assumptions at work when we, as researchers, gather information about Canadian women s lives, whether this research takes place in an institution such as Libraries and Archives Canada, or at a kitchen table with a stack of dated letters. The contributors to this collection examine the negotiations and contradictions involved in ethically dealing with the records of Canadian women s public and private lives and with the material conditions of women as cultural workers. The essays, therefore, are as much about the processes involved in creating, locating, accessing, using, and interpreting archival materials-even in deciding what constitutes an archive-as they are about the ethical questions generated by such processes.
The collection addresses the real and sometimes peculiar challenges that affect archival work today; the essays therein reflect upon the dilemmas, ethical and otherwise, that arise partly out of shifting understandings of the archival researcher s role, and partly as a function of the extension of what archives have come to mean to those same researchers. From questions of acquisition, deposition, and preservation, to challenges concerning the interpretation of material, the contributors track how fonds are created (or sidestepped) at various stages in response to political imperatives and feminist commitments; how archival material is organized, restricted, accessed, and interpreted; how alternative and immediate archives might be conceived and approached; and how exchanges might be read when there are peculiar lacunae-missing or fragmented documents, or gaps in communication-