Overview

This session focuses on the politics of collection — who decides what is worth preserving, who appears in an archive and in what form, and what changes when a community documents itself rather than being documented by an outside institution. We will look closely at the Florida Folklife Collection and then compare it to Sonidos de Houston (2022).

In-Class Exercise — Archive #5 on Canvas

1. Open the Florida Folklife Collection and the Sonidos de Houston collection in the Archive Explorer. Browse both — recordings, photographs, descriptions, and metadata.
2. Compare the two: Who collected each one, and under what circumstances? Who appears, and in what form? What kinds of materials are present or absent?
3. Write a short response: What does comparing these two archives — one from 1938, one from 2022 — reveal about how and why archives are made?

Deliverable

Submit the assignment "Archive #5" on Canvas by the end of class. Graded based on completion and engagement. See rubric for more details.