{"id":23667,"date":"2019-07-25T20:48:53","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T20:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/?p=23667"},"modified":"2019-08-05T20:07:12","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T20:07:12","slug":"the-so-what-question-in-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/2019\/07\/25\/the-so-what-question-in-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"The So-What Question in Archives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was contributed by Nicole Horowitz a graduate student in the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, who recently completed an internship with curator Anne Bahde. Nicole examined women\u2019s periodicals from the modernist period to look at the intersections between literature and material culture during the era. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

            Upon\nentering the Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC) as an\nintern, I found myself excited about so many different aspects of special collections\nand archival research. However, I\u2019ve long felt that this propensity to be\ninterested in so-called \u201cold things\u201d was rather innate, as opposed to a learned\nquality. This brings up an interesting \u201cso what?\u201d type question. What does it\nmean to be interested in material culture and archival research? What does that\nmean for scholarship in English literature? Is there an intuitive way to marry\nthese two fields? And moreover, can this framework of marriage between\ndisciplines (or, more acutely, between a field of scholarship and the material\nprint culture than underpins it) be applied to different fields of study? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nanswer to this question has been, on the whole, tricky. In explaining the work\nof my internship (and to some extent, my thesis project in general) to my\ncolleagues, I feel that specter, that so-what, so abundantly. Their work is\nlargely forward thinking, using materials created in the last few years to\nunderpin arguments about the changing nature of our world through climate\nchange, through digital media, through rhetoric and its many applications. My\nwork privileges the past: spends a lot of time mining the small details of\nartifacts housed there for insights, for distinctions, for joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            And\nmaybe therein lies the answer, on some level, to the \u201cso what.\u201d I find archival\nwork joyful. Particularly the work I do, looking at periodicals from the 1920s,\nit is hard not to get caught up in the optimism of the Modernist moment. This\noptimism is not unknown to those who don\u2019t have a vested interest in\nperiodicals. It is the reason why The\nGreat Gatsby<\/em> has been made into two films; why Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them<\/em> has found success. There is\na sense of optimism that swaddles the era and the material produced from it.\nThis manifests everywhere; in the clothing depicted, in the \u201cyou can do it\nyourself!\u201d nature of sewing patterns and recipes. In the wonder-laded tone of\nthe letters to the editors, gushing over new technology (electric billboards!\nNew cold medicines!). In the advertisement of new ingredients (pineapple!\nCanned tuna!) perhaps before unseen to middle America. In the construction of\nthe cityscape as a place to been seen in new clothes, buy new things, partake\nin new experiences that enrich the notions of what it means to be alive. And\nwhile in 2019, we might not find the same sense of wonder in the bright redness\nof a silk-styled robe or an advertisement for an electric phonograph, there is\na relevant underlying question: where\ndoes that sense of optimism live in us today?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Furthermore,\nthere is an old, perhaps all too much used adage about history: why it\u2019s\nimportant, why those who don\u2019t understand it are doomed to repeat it. I would\nsay that archival work is less concerned with the cautionary aspect of that\nadage, and more invested the mileage of historical reflection. Those who do not\nknow what has come before are unable to innovate. They cannot do something\n\u201cnew\u201d if they do not understand what is \u201cold.\u201d In this way, old things are the\ngreatest teachers in the world. They show us the place from where we\u2019ve come.\nIn the case of the work I do: a place where American society is innovating\ninclusivity, perhaps in a clunky way, but with a vigor that suggests the\nability of humankind to move past its limitation. These materials demonstrate\nboth the successes and failures of print media of the time, and in so doing,\ngive us a map of a training ground that allows us to be better in the modern\nworld. And through that, we understand that the legacy of activism, of\nanti-racism, of feminism, is longer, more tangled, and might include more types\nof expression that we are accustomed to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\nhave found my research process dangling between the poles of being enthralling\nand incredibly frustrating. It is hard to do work in which there is such an\nabundance of material in some directions, and almost no information in others.\nIt can be frustrating when things are missing, torn away, or when materials are\nnot as engaged with modern relevance as anticipated. But still, I would argue\nthat archival work is not only important in its physical\/material incarnations,\nbut also on a philosophical and even emotional level. And that this latter\naspect is the way into the rest: it is the gateway, the evangelical pathway\nthrough which all archival research is conducted and insights created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            In\nthis vein, I cannot help but think about the difference between the reaction of\nmy colleagues when I tell them about my research and when I show them things I\nhave found. On the one hand, hesitation. Lack of engagement. On the other, as I\nhold up a picture on my phone of a long-forgotten F. Scott Fitzgerald story\nentitled \u201cThe Pusher in the Face\u201d (complete with an illustration of a man, clad\nin his 1920s best, pushing a woman in the face, exactly as the title would\nsuggest), enthrallment. A look of \u201cwhat is this, and why didn\u2019t I know about it\nbefore?\u201d It is in these things, these looks, that the true thingness, the magic,\nof archival work is revealed. It is in this thingness that we continue to thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post was contributed by Nicole Horowitz a graduate student in the OSU School of Writing, Literature, and Film, who recently completed an internship with curator Anne Bahde. Nicole examined women\u2019s periodicals from the modernist period to look at the intersections between literature and material culture during the era.             Upon entering the Special Collections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9435,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9435"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23667"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23691,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23667\/revisions\/23691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/scarc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}