Building Community Archives across the Puerto Rican Archipelago (2022 – 2024)
Historically, archival practices have had a tendency to uphold a singular perspective that favors the narrative of the “great man” who accomplishes exemplary tasks as an individual. Contemporary archival theory notes that the gaps or silences in the archives are harmful to those who are not represented. Working outward from an understanding that representation matters, which undermines traditions of exclusivity, the “Speaking into Silences” project works to center underrepresented communities in both the archives and the networks of representation that extend from them. Our collaborating mutual aid organizations for this project are Centro de Apoyo Mutuo Jíbaro Lares Bartolo, Centro de Apoyo Mutuo Jíbaro Lares Pueblo, Colectivo PerlArte, and Fundación de Culebra.
OHL team members have first participated in a substantive needs assessment study with our four community partners, working collaboratively to design onsite storytelling projects and technology packages for each location, and gathering information necessary for developing a series of seminars and workshops designed specifically for our partners. In the 2023-2024 academic year, collaborators will develop their own storytelling for social justice projects in our community-oriented seminars on oral history, digital archiving, documentary filmmaking, and digital humanities and with constant mentorship from the OHL team. Each local project will culminate with the development of a public-facing digital output that will link back to the onsite archive, and the OHL will maintain a mirror collection of the completed work in the UPRM Library’s repository. This project is funded by a Digital Justice Development Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In addition to the ongoing community archiving project, OHL Director Ricia Chansky has been awarded an Assembling Voices Fellowship from the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics (INCITE) at Columbia University, also funded by the Mellon Foundation, to explore mass-listening events as civic engagement in democratic processes. Funds from this fellowship will allow the OHL to co-host mass-listening events at each of the four local organizations. These events will be focused on storytelling and offer space for community members to share stories, but will also include activities such as music, dancing, and artmaking.
