What Is a Colonial Archive?

Like biographies, archives are defined not only by what they include but also by what they exclude. Over the last decade, there have been increasing calls to “decolonize” the archive. Underlying these calls for decolonization is a more fundamental question: what is the colonial archive? The colonial archive writ large is a multilingual, trans-historical, multimedia archive created by and against colonial regimes of power. Decolonizing it entails acknowledging how imperial powers policed the inclusion and exclusion of documents and historical subjects. It also requires us to seek reparative methods of engaging with the historical record.

What Is a Colonial Archive? examines these aims by bringing together methods from literary studies, classics, the history of the book, anthropology, area studies, museum and library studies, and the history of art. This series consists of three lunchtime conversations focusing on items in Yale’s special collections, as well as a symposium and associated workshop that build toward collaborative frameworks for future teaching, research, and stewardship efforts.