Dr. Sara Dominici reports on some fascinating items examined in this week’s classes.
How are archives organised? Why is the arrangement of its contents different from the one you would expect to find in a library or museum collection? What can archival arrangement tell you about the records it contains and the people who created and used them? These are some of the questions considered this week by our MA students on the Engaging the Archive module.
To help them think through the process of archival cataloguing, Westminster’s Senior Archivist Claire Brunnen brought to class some of the records from the archive collection of the Polytechnic Rifle Club, one of the many clubs and societies run by the students at the Regent Street Polytechnic (the institution that eventually became the University of Westminster).
Engaging the Archive aims to explore the practical and conceptual issues of using archives for research purposes and, in doing so, to evaluate critically the complex relations between archival practice and theory. It gives students the skills to become confident and informed archive users, capable not only to understand and navigate the complex infrastructure of archive collections, but also to reflect critically on the process of engaging with archive records and how this impacts one’s production of knowledge, i.e., the research that we do in the archive and its interpretation.
The module is taught through workshops, seminars, and external visits, and it gives students privileged and guided access to the unique collections of the University of Westminster Archive.
Topics explored this semester include the structure and organisation of archive collections; the professional figure of the archivist and the function of appraisal; how to engage with the gaps and silences in the archive; the ethics of archival research; the difference between business/government archives and the archives of personal papers; and digital archives.
The module brings together our students from the MA Art and Visual Culture; MA Cultural and Critical Studies; and MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture.
Sara is Course Leader for the MA in Art and Visual Culture and Course Co-Leader for the MA in Museums, Galleries, and Contemporary Culture. Her research, including her book Reading the Travel Image, examines the relationship between photograph and modern experiences of leisure, most recently exploring the social and cultural role of the photographic darkroom.
