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PWR 2NCA: Discovering the Past: The Rhetoric of Archival Exploration

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Catalog Number: PWR 2NCA

Instructor: Nissa Cannon

Units: 4

Grade option: Letter (ABCD/NP) 

Prerequisite: PWR 1, ESF, ITALIC 95W, or equivalent

Schedule

Course Feature: WR-2 requirement

What do components from one of the earliest Apple computers; flyers for bay area punk shows in the 1980s; photos of female scientists at Stanford in the 1890s; and a manifesto signed by Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale have in common? They’re all objects that can be found in the Stanford Library’s archives!

Archives—collections of all kinds held by libraries, institutions, or individuals—provide endless opportunities to discover images, texts, music, films, or other objects that remain largely out of sight. In this class, we’ll explore digital and tangible archives, hunting for lost, hidden, or under-examined materials that you’ll share with your classmates, your research community, and even the wider world.

Despite researchers’ best-laid plans, they never know what they’ll find in an archive, and this class will encourage both methodical and serendipitous discovery.  As a class, we will visit Green Library’s special collections, the Hoover Institute’s archives, and various digital collections, including the Internet Archive. We’ll consider questions of gatekeeping and preservation–such as how colonial history can determine who chooses what materials to keep and what to discard; discuss how marginalized groups can use archives to assert agency over their stories; think about the increasing importance of archives in the face of climate change and global instability; and, finally work to move knowledge out of the archive and on to the public stage.

As you pursue a quarter-long research project on an archive of your choice, you’ll share your discoveries in both written and oral forms–communicating your findings to different audiences in different ways.

If you’re the kind of person who longs to uncover buried treasure, loves making finds in thrift stores, or wonders what’s in the boxes in the attic, this is your time to shine!

Examples of Research Topics

· The history of hip hop, via the Internet Archive’s collection of mixtapes

· The development of patent medicines, in the Science History Institute’s collections

· Women in tech, via Stanford’s Silicon Valley Archive

· The Black Panther Party’s activism, in Green Library’s Special Collections

· Drag performance in the 20th century, through the Digital Transgender Archive

· The Bay Area Filipino community’s history, documented in The Alvarado Project

· Student activism at Stanford, found in the University Archive

· Foundational feminists, via the Radical Online Collections and Archives

· American filmmaking’s earliest efforts, in the Media History Digital Library

PWR 2 Assignment Sequence

Research Proposal

(5-minute live oral presentation; written text of 900-1200 words; reflective memo of 250 words): In your proposal, you'll outline a research project related to a specific archival collection. In written and oral form, you’ll articulate your research question(s) and methods, establish the significance of the project, and present existing scholarship and information from relevant sources.

Written Research-Based Argument

(3000-3600 words; 10-12 pages; reflective memo of 250 words): Focusing on a selection of objects from your archive, you’ll contextualize these discoveries with outside sources, to develop an original argument about these materials.

Research Presenation

(10-minute live oral presentation with appropriate multimedia support; reflective memo of 250 words): In this oral presentation, you will share your research conclusions and argument, using appropriate media (props, music, film, slides, etc.).

Genre/Modes Assignment

(contribution to Wikipedia): In this assignment, you’ll use secondary sources to write and/or supplement an existing Wikipedia entry related to your archive—filling the site’s “knowledge gaps” and providing citations for key information.