Moving Archives
Published on 17. March 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
232 pages
978-1-77112-713-4 (ISBN)
Description
The image of the dusty, undisturbed archive has been swept away in response to growing interest across disciplines in the materials they house and the desire to find and make meaning through an engagement with those materials. Archival studies scholars and archivists are developing related theoretical frameworks and practices that recognize that the archives are anything but static. Archival deposits are proliferating, and the architects, practitioners, and scholars engaged with them are scarcely able to keep abreast of them. Archives, archival theory, and archival practice are on the move.
But what of the archives that were once safely housed and have since been lost, or are under threat? What of the urgency that underscores the appeals made on behalf of these archives? As scholars in this volume argue, archives-their materialization, their preservation, and the research produced about them-are moving in a different way: they are involved in an emotionally engaged and charged process, one that acts equally upon archival subjects and those engaged with them. So too do archives at once represent members of various communities and the fields of study drawn to them.
Moving Archives grounds itself in the critical trajectory related to what Sara Ahmed calls "affective economies" to offer fresh insights about the process of archiving and approaching literary materials. These economies are not necessarily determined by ethical impulses, although many scholars have called out for such impulses to underwrite current archival practices; rather, they form the crucial affective contexts for the legitimization of archival caches in the present moment and for future use.
But what of the archives that were once safely housed and have since been lost, or are under threat? What of the urgency that underscores the appeals made on behalf of these archives? As scholars in this volume argue, archives-their materialization, their preservation, and the research produced about them-are moving in a different way: they are involved in an emotionally engaged and charged process, one that acts equally upon archival subjects and those engaged with them. So too do archives at once represent members of various communities and the fields of study drawn to them.
Moving Archives grounds itself in the critical trajectory related to what Sara Ahmed calls "affective economies" to offer fresh insights about the process of archiving and approaching literary materials. These economies are not necessarily determined by ethical impulses, although many scholars have called out for such impulses to underwrite current archival practices; rather, they form the crucial affective contexts for the legitimization of archival caches in the present moment and for future use.
Reviews / Votes
"Archives are not only physical repositories and electronic entities, they are affective commodities with the power to move researchers and archivists who work with them. This thoughtful collection of essays occasionally touches on the gathering and transfer of archival materials, but its emphasis is less on the physical and more on the emotional: archives as agents of transformative change. The essays Morra (Bishop's Univ., Canada) has brought together explore various situations, for example, the removal of documents and books from a dying writer's home to a university archive; the implications of a sale of a literary archive from its linguistic home in Ireland to the special collections of an American university; the absence or manipulation of voice and experience of black slaves in the records of Canadian fur traders. The final essay is particularly apt: a personal account of how a scholar came to grips with her own sexuality through the process of creating an online archive of the writings of another. This is not a practical text for archivists but a collection for anyone who wishes to explore what is elicited through working with archives. -L. J. Sherlock, Victoria University"Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, professionals." - CHOICE
"In opening up a space to consider affect in the creation of archives, including what Jennifer Douglas calls the "aspirational" archive, Morra invites the possibility for archival scholars to reflect upon their own aspirations for the archives they participate in creating-and how those aspirations inevitably become encoded into the archives themselves. Thus does the field move, and as it moves it stirs, and the silt aroused by that movement stretches over the gaps and the abyss."-Gregory Betts, Canadian Literature
"Moving Archives is a celebration of ethical collection and community or, as Kean words it in chapter five, kinship. Morra and the other archival theorists have tentatively charted the shifted boundaries in the field and found wider space for new and established voices. ... Moving Archives shows us that, if we understand archives as Jennifer Douglas does - as post-mortem social lives - how and where we support their existence says everything about us." -Jocelyn Williams, University of Toronto Quarterly
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 12 mm
Weight
318 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-77112-713-4 (9781771127134)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Linda M. Morra is a settler scholar and Full Professor at Bishop's University, and a former Craig Dobbin Chair (2016-2017). Her book Unarrested Archives, was a finalist for the Gabrielle Roy Prize in 2015. She prepared Jane Rule's posthumously published memoir, Taking My Life, which was a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2011.
Content
Introduction: Moving Archives: The Affective Economies and Potentialities of Literary Archival Materials - Linda M. Morra, Bishop's University
Chapter One: Archive Transfer - Archival Transformation: The Intervening Space Between - Patricia Godbout and Marc Andre Fortin, Universite de Sherbrooke
Chapter Two: Don't you know that digitization is not enough? Digitization is not enough! Building Accountable Archives and the Digital Dilemma of the Cabaret Commons - T.L. Cowan, University of Toronto
Chapter Three: Myles na gCopaleen's 'An Scian': A Knife in the Back of Irish Archivists - Joseph LaBine, University of Ottawa
Chapter Four: Inside the Cover, Outside the Archive: The Dispersal, Loss, and Value of Jane Rule's Personal Library - Linda M. Morra, Bishop's University
Chapter Five: "The fearful state of things": Technologies of Transparency in the Annual Report of the Canada Sunday School Union, 1836-1876 - Erin Kean, University of Ottawa
Chapter Six: Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb - Katherine McLeod, Concordia University
Chapter Seven: Fresh-Water Archives: Reading Water in Troy Burle Bailey's The Pierre Bonga Loops - Karina Vernon, University of Toronto
Chapter Eight: Letting Grief Move Me: Thinking Through the Affective Dimensions of Personal Recordkeeping - Jennifer Douglas, University of British Columbia
Chapter Nine: Reading for Queer Openings: Moving. Archives of the Self. Fred Wah. - Susan Rudy, Queen Mary University of London
Chapter One: Archive Transfer - Archival Transformation: The Intervening Space Between - Patricia Godbout and Marc Andre Fortin, Universite de Sherbrooke
Chapter Two: Don't you know that digitization is not enough? Digitization is not enough! Building Accountable Archives and the Digital Dilemma of the Cabaret Commons - T.L. Cowan, University of Toronto
Chapter Three: Myles na gCopaleen's 'An Scian': A Knife in the Back of Irish Archivists - Joseph LaBine, University of Ottawa
Chapter Four: Inside the Cover, Outside the Archive: The Dispersal, Loss, and Value of Jane Rule's Personal Library - Linda M. Morra, Bishop's University
Chapter Five: "The fearful state of things": Technologies of Transparency in the Annual Report of the Canada Sunday School Union, 1836-1876 - Erin Kean, University of Ottawa
Chapter Six: Listening to the Archives of Phyllis Webb - Katherine McLeod, Concordia University
Chapter Seven: Fresh-Water Archives: Reading Water in Troy Burle Bailey's The Pierre Bonga Loops - Karina Vernon, University of Toronto
Chapter Eight: Letting Grief Move Me: Thinking Through the Affective Dimensions of Personal Recordkeeping - Jennifer Douglas, University of British Columbia
Chapter Nine: Reading for Queer Openings: Moving. Archives of the Self. Fred Wah. - Susan Rudy, Queen Mary University of London