Publication Reviews

Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research. Edited by Maryanne Dever. [Review]

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Abstract

Originally published as a special issue for Australian Feminist Studies (volume 32, March–June 2017), this collection of writings poses a direct and thoughtful response to emerging discourse on feminist archives. It emphasizes community-focused, distributed, decolonized, and postcustodial archival approaches for many interdisciplinary and community uses and for community self-representation. Editor Maryanne Dever spends little time recounting the basic tenets of feminism or of archives and instead brings the reader directly into the challenge of the moment—interrogating the how and why of disruptive feminist advocacy and of practices that could crack open archival futures. Presented as 12 chapters by 17 contributors, it reads first and foremost as a work targeted at an interdisciplinary scholarly audience newly engaging with archival theory. First published in 2017, the writings, of course, predate the pandemic, #MeToo, #BLM, and the broader 2020 movement for racial and social justice and so only indirectly call for antiracism, reparative practices, and digital access equity. Nevertheless, in many ways, they presage those clarion calls by insisting the larger academic world must better engage with archival theory for a more just, equitable, inclusive, feminist future.

How to Cite:

Carter, K. S., (2022) “Archives and New Modes of Feminist Research. Edited by Maryanne Dever. [Review]”, Archival Issues 41(2), 60–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/archivalissues.15612