Reading Group Schedule

Interested in joining an upcoming reading group meeting? Email cmg100[at]pitt.edu for more information.

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July 27, 2025

Sugarcane (2024)
Streaming on Hulu/Disney+ (free trial available)

Dahomey (2024)
Streaming on MUBI (free trial available)

Sugarcane (from website): "In 2021, evidence of unmarked graves near an Indian residential school run by the Catholic Church in Canada sparked a national outcry about the forced separation, assimilation, and abuse many children experienced at this network of segregated boarding schools designed to slowly destroy the culture and social fabric of Indigenous communities. When Kassie- a journalist and filmmaker- asked her old friend and colleague, NoiseCat, to direct a film documenting the Williams Lake First Nation investigation of St Joseph’s Mission, she never imagined just how close this story was to his own family. As the investigation continued, Emily and Julian traveled back to the rivers, forests and mountains of his homelands to hear the myriad stories of survivors. During production, Julian’s own story became an integral part of this beautiful multi-stranded portrait of a community. By offering space, time, and profound empathy the directors unearthed what was hidden. Kassie and NoiseCat encountered both the extraordinary pain these individuals had to suppress as a tool for survival and the unique beauty of a group of people finding the strength to persevere."

Dahomey (from website): "The African kingdom of Dahomey, which ruled over its region at the west of the continent until the turn of the 20th century, saw hundreds of its splendid royal artifacts plundered by French colonial troops in its waning days. Now, as 26 of these treasures are set to return to their homeland—now within the Republic of Benin—filmmaker Mati Diop documents their voyage back. As with her layered, supernaturally tinged Atlantics, Diop takes a singular approach to contemporary questions around belonging in our postcolonial world, transforming this rich subject matter into a multifaceted examination of ownership and exhibition, and employing multiple points of view, including—most strikingly—those of the artifacts themselves as they sail in darkness over the ocean to their rightful home. Alternating images of nocturnal melancholy and debates among students at Benin’s University of Abomey-Calavi about what should be done with the objects, Dahomey brilliantly negotiates a lost past and an unsure present. Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection. A MUBI release."

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March 23, 2025

Luker, Trish. “Decolonising Archives: Indigenous Challenges to Record Keeping in ‘Reconciling’ Settler Colonial States.” Australian Feminist Studies 32, no. 91–92 (2017): 108–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2017.1357011.

McKemmish, Sue, Shannon Faulkhead, and Lynette Russell. “Distrust in the Archive: Reconciling Records.” Archival Science 11, no. 3–4 (2011): 211–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-011-9153-2.

Thorpe, Kirsten. “Transforming Praxis – Building Spaces for Indigenous Self-Determination in Libraries and Archives.” In the Library With the Lead Pipe (2019). http://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2019/transformative-praxis/.

In this month’s meeting we discussed this trio of articles, considering the approaches to addressing generational trauma associated with Indigenous records explored in each.

Our April meeting will continue to explore these themes, focusing on case studies and collection narratives.

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November 10, 2024

Caswell, Michelle. “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Records Documenting Human Rights Abuse: Lessons from Community Archives.” Archival Science 14, no. 3–4 (2014): 307–22.

Abstract: This article proposes a theoretical framework for managing records documenting human rights abuse based on five key principles learned from community archives discourses: participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, and reflexivity. In shifting the focus of human rights archives to these core community-centric values, this paper proposes a survivor-centered approach to such records and argues that survivors should maintain control over the decision-making processes related to records documenting their abuse.

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October 13, 2024

Sloan, Katie, Jennifer Vanderfluit, Jennifer Douglas. “Not ‘Just My Problem to Handle’: Emerging Themes on Secondary Trauma and Archivists.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 6 (2019): 1-24.

Abstract: “This article reports on the findings of a survey issued to Canadian archivists regarding their understanding and experiences of secondary trauma. As exploratory research, the article summarizes findings of the survey and identifies emerging themes based on qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions. Emerging themes relate to the difficulty of defining what constitutes a traumatic record; working with donors and researchers; the effects of organizational culture and archival professional norms; the impact of precarious labor on experiences of trauma; and the role of archival education programs and professional associations in preparing and supporting archivists to work with difficult materials. The article concludes by outlining an agenda for future research.”

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September 22, 2024

Wright, Kirsten, and Nicola Laurent. “Safety, Collaboration, and Empowerment: Trauma-Informed Archival Practice.” Archivaria 91, no. 91 (2021): 38–73.

Abstract: “In order to undertake liberatory memory work, engage effectively with communities and individuals, and centre people rather than records in their work, archival organizations must be aware of trauma and its effects. This article introduces the concept of trauma-informed practice to archives and other memory organizations. Trauma-informed practice is a strengths-based approach for organizations that acknowledges the pervasiveness of trauma and the risk and potential for people to be retraumatized through engagement with organizations such as archives and seeks to minimize triggers and negative interactions. It provides a framework of safety and offers a model of collaboration and empowerment that recognizes and centres the expertise of the individuals and communities documented within the records held in archives. Traumainformed practice also provides a way for archivists to practically implement many of the ideas discussed in the literature, including liberatory memory work, radical empathy, and participatory co-design. This article proposes several areas where a trauma-informed approach may be useful in archives and may lead to trauma-informed archival practice that provides better outcomes for all: users, staff, and memory organizations in general. Applying trauma-informed archival practice is multidimensional. It requires the comprehensive review of archival practice, theory, and processes and the consideration of the specific needs of individual memory organizations and the people who interact with them. Each organization should implement trauma-informed practice in the way that will achieve outcomes appropriate for its own context. These out comes can include recognizing and acknowledging past wrongs, ensuring safety for archives users and staff, empowering communities documented in archives, and using archives for justice and healing.”

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July 21, 2024

Caswell, Michelle, and Marika Cifor. “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in the Archives.” Archivaria 81, no. 1 (2016): 23–43.

Abstract: “Much recent discussion about social justice in archival studies has assumed a legalistic, rights-based framework to delineate the role of records, archives, and archivists in both the violation of human rights and in holding individuals and governments accountable for basic human rights, such as the right to life, privacy, and freedom of expression. Yet decades of feminist scholarship have called into question the universality of a rights-based framework, arguing instead that an ethics of care is a more inclusive and apt model for envisioning and enacting a more just society. This article proposes a shift in the theoretical model used by archivists and archival studies scholars to address social justice concerns – from that based on individual rights to a model based on feminist ethics. In a feminist ethics approach, archivists are seen as caregivers, bound to records creators, subjects, users, and communities through a web of mutual affective responsibility. This article proposes four interrelated shifts in these archival relationships, based on radical empathy.”

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June 20, 2024

Mathieson, Malcolm. A Trauma-Informed Approach to Archives, Citizen Evidence, August 30, 2023. https://citizenevidence.org/2023/08/30/a-trauma-informed-approach-to-archives/.

Tansey, Eira. "No One Owes Their Trauma to Archivists, or, the Commodification of Contemporaneous Collecting," Eira Tansey (blog), June 5, 2020. http://eiratansey.com/2020/06/05/no-one-owes-their-trauma-to-archivists-or-the-commodification-of-contemporaneous-collecting/.

Mathieson: This blog post by Amnesty International’s archivist describes the vicarious trauma that archivists may experience in their work and introduces the concept of trauma-informed archives.

Tansey: This blog post explores trauma in recordkeeping from the record creator’s perspective and discusses ethical considerations for archivists who wish to document current events.

© 2024

Scylla Humbert & Chelsea Gunn

Trauma-Informed Archives Collective Reading Group Schedule About Us Resources

Trauma-Informed Archives Collective
Reading Group Schedule
About Us
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