A Liberated Archives Experience: Black Memory, Social Justice, Art, and the Archive

To commemorate the closing of the Knight Library exhibition: Archives for Black Lives, A Liberated Archives Exhibition, we will bring together speakers, students, staff, and faculty for a compelling event that will explore the significance of Black Memory as it intersects with archives and museums and within the praxis of cultural production.

Archivist Bill Doggett will present on the significance of early recorded sound, and how technology commercialized structural racism with the phonograph and the phonograph record. La Tanya Autry will conduct a workshop for graduate students and upper-class undergraduates entitled, Arts & Social Justice Workout, wherein students will be asked to explore the challenges and possibilities of cultural work, and to develop their own ethos and analyses of existing power structures. The event will culminate in a conversation between Teressa Raiford, Autry, and Doggett, wherein they will share experiences of working both within and outside of cultural institutions, and the power of art to activate issues of social justice.  A reception and tour of the Liberated Archives Exhibition will follow.  

The event will strengthen the UO Library’s efforts to adhere to the IDEAL framework. By engendering a space wherein we are asked to interrogate the institutional role in the production of knowledge, history, and culture, we demonstrate a willingness and openness to reevaluate our practices and policies to be more inclusive, diverse, and equitable. We will measure our success based on student, staff, and faculty engagement, and by the types of conversations that this event will inspire (we are confident there will be many!).