ANN: "Archives Matter: Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Encounters" Conference 2016 (2-3 June 2016)

Archives Matter: Queer, Feminist and Decolonial Encounters

This conference will take place on the 2nd and 3rd of June 2016 at Goldsmiths, University of London and is hosted by the Centre for Feminist Research

Archives matter. Archives are bound up with the question of whose history is worth preserving. Scholars in postcolonial and decolonial studies have broadened our understanding of archives by thinking of ‘imperial archives’ (Ann Stoler/ Thomas Richards) and colonialism as a ‘cultural archive’ (Edward Said/ Gloria Wekker): ways of understanding how the documents left behind by empire were made, distributed as well as stored, and ways of opening up what is meant by a document: to document is an action that is performed in relation to bodies. This conference will focus on the ways in which we encounter the archive and consider how we might engage the archive differently within feminist, queer and decolonial studies.

We hope in this conference to think toward different uses of archive, from a range of disciplines and perspectives. We hope to explore, how the institutional archive can be made feminist, queered or decolonized, and in which ways we can build on transnational archives as well as establish our own archives. We wish to invite postgraduate students, early career researchers as well as activists, artists and anyone else to contribute.

You can sign up to attend the conference here: http://www.eventbrite.com/o/centre-for-feminist-research-goldsmiths-university-9871931156 and the program is here: https://archivesmatterconference.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/archives-matter-conference-pr...