archives | Center for the Humanities at UC Merced

By Shiraz Noorani, Graduate Student Researcher, Center for the Humanities, UC Merced

Crumme, Hannah Leah. “Building Community Archives: Vietnamese Portland.” The Routledge Companion to Public Humanities Scholarship. Routledge, 2024. 128-138. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003248125-10/building-community-archives-hannah-leah-crumm%C3%A9

In “Building Community Archives: Vietnamese Portland,” Hannah Leah Crumme describes an initiative of Lewis & Clark College’s Special Collections to broaden Portland, Oregon’s historical record by building a community-based digital archive regarding the Vietnamese American community. Recognizing that traditional archives are far too often centered on white settler histories, Crumme and her team wanted to document the diverse experiences that shape the city explicitly, especially those of Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants, in their contributions and struggles. It also represents an alarmingly underrepresented population in Portland. The project, launched in 2017, grew from the college’s initiative to create more inclusive collections to better represent Portland’s multicultural legacy. It has collaborated with community leaders, like Thao Tu, who is president of the Vietnamese Community of Oregon, for cultural sensitivity and authenticity by collecting oral history, photographs, and documents; often, translators have been used to capture stories in both languages, English and Vietnamese. For the most part, it has been grant-funded by institutions, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, allowing Crumme and her team to hire student workers and cultural consultants, as well as reach out to local Vietnamese groups via events such as the annual Tet Festival. It is an initiative that not only looks to preserve the heritage of Vietnamese Portlanders but also works to incorporate their stories into local education through materials for public school curricula and exhibitions in community spaces, broadening public understanding of the city’s historical landscape.

Garcia-Medina, William. Making Black Public Humanities in South Florida: Fugitive Pedagogies, Self-Making, and Memory Work. Diss. University of Kansas, 2022. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2679773033?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses

This dissertation by William Garcia-Medina gives a descriptive framework to understand the intersections of memory work with Black public humanities. He introduces theoretical methods underpinning the study of Black public humanities, including: fugitive pedagogy, a term that describes the educational practices Black educators have utilized to resist systemic oppression; and self-making, a concept that highlights the active ways in which Black individuals and communities shape their identities through cultural, intellectual, and political practices. These strategies are used in Black memory work, in the conservation and distribution of Black collective memory, and in making sure that histories are recorded and passed on through community-led initiatives.

Additionally, the dissertation discusses modern forms of public humanities within digital landscapes, demonstrating how the AARLCC embraces technology to expand its reach. It inspires further investigation into the ways digital platforms can magnify Black voices while staying rooted in local, community-based memory work.

Hill, Cecily Erin, and Mariel Aquino. “Community Case Studies: How the Humanities Enrich Community Life.” National Humanities Alliance. https://nhalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NHA-COMMUNITY-CASE-STUDIES-OVERVIEW-2024.pdf

This document provides an in-depth exploration of how communities across the United States are utilizing the humanities to address societal challenges, preserve cultural heritage, and foster social equity. It showcases case studies from Nogales, Arizona; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Charleston, South Carolina, each illustrating how humanities-based initiatives are empowering local populations. Through partnerships with local organizations, these initiatives utilize history, storytelling, and cultural practices to address issues such as economic inequality, racial divisions, and environmental challenges.

In Nogales, history and storytelling are used to reshape the narrative surrounding life on the U.S.-Mexico border, fostering a sense of pride and community resilience. In Rapid City, efforts focus on bridging divides between Native and non-Native populations through cultural recognition and historical research, leading to improved community trust and mental health outcomes. Charleston’s case study highlights initiatives aimed at confronting its legacy of slavery while promoting dialogue around the impacts of gentrification and climate change on African American communities. Together, these studies emphasize the vital role the humanities play in community-building and social progress.

Ramirez, Mario H., and Lorena Gauthereau. “Documenting Transborder Latinidades.” The International Journal of Information, Diversity, and Inclusion 6.4 (2022): 1-7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/48720302.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A83b2d3271332df2053e846c62e909d08&ab_segments=&initiator=&acceptTC=1

The article “Documenting Transborder Latinidades” by Mario H. Ramirez and Lorena Gauthereau explores the dynamic relationship of archives, libraries, and digital humanities in the documentation of the lived experience of transborder Latinx communities. The authors have shown a rich history and identities formed across migrating journeys and colonial legacy.

This article underlines how community-based archives preserve and celebrate diverse histories formed with and within Latinx communities. These projects, in turn, collaboratively create an active form of memory-building participation among the archivists, academics, and people in these communities. This provides access on a wider scale and, consequently, allows self-identity and contributions of marginalized groups to have their voices heard at global and local levels.

Shang, Haoyi. Telling Our Own Stories: An Analysis of Asian American Community Museums in the U.S. Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 2023. https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/11d7eaaf-693d-4b62-bd01-ec9a24cbf358.

This dissertation explores the importance of community museums in showcasing the stories of American communities from a cultural standpoint. The paper also highlights efforts to address the historical oversight of Asian American contributions in mainstream U.S. heritage narratives through case studies of three institutions: the Portland Chinatown Museum, the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, and the National Cambodian Heritage Museum & Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago. The study delves into the significance of community museums in bridging history with shared memory and effectively involving the public in cultural engagement activities. Haoyi Shang touches upon the roles of museums as historical interpreters that support and safeguard local identities. Additionally, the dissertation explores the origins of these museums and their community-centric method of organizing exhibits to showcase a variety of narratives.

By Ivan Gonzalez-Soto, Doctoral Student, UC Merced

Prior to COVID-19, I used critical race and ethnic studies, history, and environmental studies to frame my research on water, racialized labor, and agrarian capitalism in the 20th-century US west. Recently, I’ve added another lens through which to understand my research questions: the graphic novel. Allow me to illustrate.

During the Spring 2020 semester, I enrolled in a graduate seminar titled “Race, State, and Power” and met once a week with peers to discuss books on global insurgencies, racial capitalism, and the nation state. Unbeknownst to me then, our course readings—which paired critical history with speculative fiction—would set two creative projects in motion which helped me cope with the state of the world while pushing the limits of what I thought reflected a good/traditional dissertation project.

Over the past months, I’ve used art and speculative fiction to cope with declension narratives and doom and gloom statistics that envelope the present moment. Fiction by Octavia E. Butler, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi, and Fernando Flores have shown me how to interpret the past, present, and future in ways I had never imagined. Their stories, albeit odd, offered respite when I needed it most. Most importantly, their novels helped me hang on to a future in which things eventually do get better. I imagined I could be, as the non-profit online magazine Grist eloquently writes, “working toward a planet that doesn’t burn, a future that doesn’t suck.”

The closure of archives during the pandemic resulted in unexpected changes that challenged me to brainstorm other research methods for my work. All the while, I searched for opportunities to broaden the scope of my work through creative perspectives. This has manifested as a creative outlet wherein I illustrate scenes from the archive. Examples, like my illustrations below, merged mid-twentieth century black and white archival photographs in the public domain with colorful renditions that brought the archive to life. The sample illustrations below are creative drafts in which I incorporated storyboards, dialogue, and historical references to emphasize key elements in the histories I’m exploring for my dissertation.

I will still write my dissertation in the academic prose expected of doctoral research. However, the graphic novel component I’ve envisioned has the potential to reach an entirely new audience that may not have an interest in reading standard, double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman, linear text. Together, the traditional dissertation and artistic renditions offer an innovative form of storytelling.

In line with the creative aspect of this work, I’m using graphic history to share my work while imagining alternatives for a better future through speculative fiction. That is, I’m blending history with imaginative fiction to think of how problems of the past can be addressed and abolished in the future. In this way, I am able to explain past issues while imagining alternative futures in which things get better. Themes such as labor exploitation in agricultural fields, environmental degradation due to toxic pesticides, and the expansion of prisons and militarized border walls can be written out in the speculative futures I’m writing about. This helps me find hope through abolitionist alternatives to get to the world I want to be a part of. And while it may seem idealist, the pandemic has reminded me that I must imagine alternatives with a better future to stay hopeful.

*By Ivan, spring 2021. Digital drawing over an online Library of Congress photograph.*

Unlike the archival photographs that captured Imperial Valley farmworkers as nameless and faceless subjects (see original photograph here), my illustrations help breathe new life to the workers’ struggle by centering their lives in local history. This approach speaks against dominant discourse and regional histories which alienate and render workers invisible to the land. This erasure is a trend in mainstream history, but I believe the workers’ stories in the Imperial Valley are out there—even if their stories aren’t necessarily preserved in the traditional archive. As a creative project, I’m formulating the past through speculative historical fiction to center the agency of Imperial Valley’s working class alongside a brighter future. Indeed, the workers have a story to tell; they’re there—even though the archive suggests otherwise.

Other illustrations, like the special collections box below, have the potential to communicate the research behind my work. While I couldn’t take my readers to the archive reading rooms, I can illustrate what and how I saw the archive in ways that a footnote simply could not. There’s hope in the dissertation-research-turned-graphic-novel approach because it helps the public visualize the past to shape a better and more just future. In the process, the speculative approaches in this work might help speak more just futures into existence.

*By Ivan, fall 2020. Digital drawing over personal photograph taken at UCLA archives in 2019.*

Because many archives closed temporarily or were shuttered completely, I was forced to adapt my research into something more accessible. And to cope with declension narratives that enveloped this last year, I’ve turned to art and speculative fiction to make sense of my research through new angles. I’ve since collaborated on a reader-friendly environmental justice comic book on the right to clean drinking water based on a fictional town in California’s Central Valley. It explores my research through fictional characters in ways that bar graphs, charts, and conference presentations could not. That little comic book is now a resource for rural communities of color in the San Joaquin Valley and it’s publicly available through eScholarship. Projects like these are the result of finding ways to cope with the pandemic while getting creative in the process, and I hope to connect with others out there interested in similar work.

Center for the Humanities at UC Merced

Tag Archives: archives

Public Humanities in Practice: Selected Annotated Case Studies

Graphic History: COVID-19, Speculative Fiction, and Illustrating the Archive