Students at the University of British Columbia will have the opportunity in two weeks to learn how to “heal, honour, and care” for black individuals via the practice of “Black archival practice.”
September 19’s workshop “Healing with Archives: A Conversation with Melissa J. Nelson” will demonstrate “the specific modes of archiving that are imagined, developed, and enacted by Black archival practitioners.”
Although UBC’s announcement doesn’t offer much of an explanation of what Black archival practices entail, Nelson’s website says she provides “expertise on ethical stewardship of Black cultural heritage and anti-Black archival materials” by addressing “practices that have often excluded, invisibilized, and objectified Black users and subjects.”
Nelson (pictured) also claims she will teach participants to “adopt archival practices that allow for a more liberated and inclusive future.”
The website description for her two-hour-long “Description and Access for Anti-Black Archival Materials” training says participants will “learn how to apply anti-racist frameworks to descriptive practices” and “understand how to minimize harm while facilitating access to racist archival records.”
Nelson also leads a “Toward Community-Centered Reference” workshop in which attendees will learn “to think critically about their positionality and their current approaches to providing access,” “how to unpack how white supremacy shows up in archives” and “how to identify and address oppressive practices in access and reference.”
According to her website, Nelson currently serves as an archivist for the Archives of Ontario and is the founder of the Black Memory Collective. Her work is “informed” by “Black studies, feminist care ethics, critical archival studies, and critical race theory,” and “driven by ‘critical hopefulness.'”
The Black Memory Collective is “part of a larger movement to reclaim, recognize, and celebrate Black memory and imagine Black futurities,” her site notes.
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IMAGE: Melissa Nelson/Instagram
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