Dusting Off the Archives
Scholars tap innovative research methods to plumb archives
By Katherine Yungmee Kim
Lawrence Green’s students are talking about Barbary Coast pirates, the
Salem Witch trials and the Koran. But what is most remarkable about the
conversation in his “Islam and the Renaissance” class is not the lively
content, but its source.
At the front of the classroom is the computer projection of a 1698
pamphlet by Cotton Mather. It is the first time in almost 300 years
that this rare archival material has been discussed in detail.
Green’s innovative course is taught entirely with archival materials or
texts that have almost never been reprinted. The class wouldn’t have
been possible without USC’s recent subscription to a digital database
called Early English Books Online (EEBO).
This incomparable collection of over 100,000 titles begins with the
first book published in English through the age of Shakespeare and
Milton.
Green, a Renaissance professor in the English department, sent out a
petition last fall to his early modern studies colleagues in the
humanities, concerning the EEBO database. There was an outpouring of
faculty support, and within six weeks, the University “moved
decisively” to acquire this research and teaching resource.
In his office, Green performs a sample search on EEBO, which his
students can access online 24-hours a day. He highlights a particular
text located at Christ Church, a college at the University of Oxford,
whose archives are notoriously difficult to enter.
“This class simply could not have been done before,” Green enthused.
“It’s part database, part electronic amalgam of hundreds of archives.
You can visit 15 archives in a day!”
His students comment on their hands-on work with archival material.
“This is the first time I’ve learned to look through a mess of things
and make sense of it,” says senior Adam Currier, a College double major
in English and sociology. “In other courses where we study out of
anthologies, the pieces are all tied together. Here, I am making my own
connections.”
Bruce Smith, a Renaissance professor and new senior hire, plans to
spend the next few months looking at tapestries and wall hangings at
the Huntington Library in San Marino, a familiar haunt to him from his
days researching his book on the urban soundscapes of Shakespearean
London. Smith’s new book is on “passionate perception” in the 16th and
17th centuries.
Smith’s methodologies consist of reading literary texts from the period
that have to do with vision, hearing, sensation and perception,
studying modern neuroscience, and examining visual images and music of
this period.
But archives need not be centuries-old texts. Professor Carla Kaplan
compiled an 800-page collection of Zora Neale Hurston’s letters written
in the 20th century. David Román, a professor of American Studies and
English, researches what he calls an “embodied” archive, along with
official archives. His latest book is on the performing arts in
contemporary American culture.
“My main archive is not found in university settings, libraries or
museums,” Román states. “It is found in the theaters and performance
venues spread throughout the nation.”
Román is also teaching an archival research course, focusing on the
preservation of cultural practices and histories of minority
subcultures.
“We will survey the many different ways that scholars established
archives for subcultural groups whose relationships to traditional
archival systems cannot be assumed,” he details.
Assistant Professor of English Rebecca Lemon notes the role of archival
research in the College’s English department, claiming it has clearly
utilized inventive and thought-provoking methods of scrutiny.
“We are unusually receptive to conducting such archival research within
a framework driven by aesthetic, social and cultural questions that
extend beyond the archive,” Lemon assesses. “It is this balance that is
especially compelling.”
|
|
|
