First-Year Research Seminar: Archives and the Imperfect Production of Knowledge

Catalog description

What is an archive? This course tackles that complicated question as we investigate the role that archives how they are assembled, curated and used can play in shaping knowledge production and historical narratives. As scholars Joan Schwartz and Terry Cook argue, they are not passive storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed. Our case studies of historical visual archives question: Which images matter and why? Who has the power to make such decisions? What might absent images reveal? As Taryn Simon has observed of archives, "Something is said in the gaps between all the information" Working with NYU's Grey Art Gallery collections as well as Bobst Library's holdings, students will study, hands on, as they learn to ask critical questions about organization, access, authorship, and ethics in both traditional and contemporary archival practice. Readings for this course include theory and cultural criticism, and our work entails delving into both online and physical archives. Guest speakers may include archivists and the Grey Gallery's Head of Education and Programs Leah Sweet. Students will write 2 short essays and then a longer research paper, delving into a specific aspect of the historiographical and theoretical debates around archives and the production of knowledge.