South Africa, Archives and the African National Congress

Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg

Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg

My visit to South Africa on assignment for Global Affairs/UNESCO and Archives & Special Collections began in the first week of June in Johannesburg during an unusually cold winter (for South Africa).  The purpose of the trip was to explore and convene on the archival landscape which had been mapped in 2000 through a partnership between the African National Congress (ANC) and the University of Connecticut.  The initial archives project was funded by the Mellon Foundation to organize, describe and make accessible the ANC archives documenting its activities while in exile under Apartheid.  These archives, located at the National Heritage and Cultural Studies Center (NAHECS) University of Fort Hare (UFH) in Alice, Eastern Cape, have been available in their reading room for public research since 2005.  Between 2000 and 2005, UConn sent faculty, archivists, librarians and oral historians to UFH to hold training sessions and benefit from this skill sharing partnership.  In conjunction, UFH sent archivists and librarians to receive training within the UConn libraries. Continue reading

The Hunting Ground, Film Screening

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The Title IX Coalition and The Graduate Employee Union/United Auto Workers Union will host a discussion and screening of the film The Hunting Ground, the ground breaking documentary that demonstrates the prevalence of sexual violence on college campuses and the lack of meaningful administrative response to victim-survivors.

The film engages with the Title IX struggles and the national movement across college campuses, which includes the University of Connecticut.  After the film, a discussion will follow with students and faculty who have been part of the legal filings and ongoing social justice movements at UCONN.

 

 

THE HUNTING GROUND

THURSDAY, APRIL 9TH, 2015 AT 5:30PM 

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT, STORRS

SCHOOL OF NURSING, RM. WW16

(http://classrooms.uconn.edu/carolyn-ladd-widmer-wing-16/)

2014-2015 Human Rights Film Series: Come Hell or High Water

89f65881-95da-4ba0-80dc-25ee3640b277 Wednesday February 11th, 2015

4:00pm-6:00pm

Storrs Campus

Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center

Admission is FREE

    Come Hell or High Water (2014)

This film follows the painful but inspiring journey of Derrick Evans, a Boston teacher who moves home to coastal Mississippi when the graves of his ancestors are bulldozed to make way for the sprawling city of Gulfport. Over the course of a decade, Derrick and his neighbor stand up to powerful corporate interests and politicians and face ordeals that include Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil disaster in their struggle for self-determination and environmental justice.

TRAILER

Human Rights Institute Film Series: October 2014

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The first installment of the HRI Films Series will begin Wednesday, October 1st with the screening of Blood Rising: Daughters of Mexico. The film will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmaker Mark McLoughlin and other invited speakers.  Airing at 3:30-6:00pm in Konover Auditorium, Dodd Research Center.

Filming of Abuse, Archiving for Authenticity

As we have seen over the last 10 years, access to portable video devices has risen in the US as well as the world over.  In 2014 alone, video footage of police brutality and homicide have overturned arrests and brought charges to those responsible. Often, human rights violations and atrocities are now being recorded by observers and activists who want their footage to be seen. WITNESS, a leading documentation advocacy organization, has produced a readily accessible document for how-to-film and archive footage for preservation and access.

Recently, head archivist and co-author of the Witness video archive, Yvonne NG, was interviewed on Democracy Now! regarding the most recent police brutality incidents in New York City and Ferguson, MO being promoted on social media.

Resources from Witness: http://witness.org/resources/

Terry Cook

Yesterday, the Archival profession lost a giant who agitated, inspired and implemented seminal ways of stewarding history and record-keeping.  His passion for teaching and mentoring young archivists well into retirement was best vocalized in his 2010 ACA Keynote, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.”  A strong advocate for human rights and archival implications of documentation and advocating for future generations is represented in the voice he so passionately infused in his many articles and speeches given around the world. Continue reading

April 21 - April 22, 2014
April 21 – April 22, 2014

The Archives and Special Collections in collaboration with the Dodd Center and Booklyn Artists Alliance, are hosting two days of events on War, Struggle and Visual Politics: Art on the Frontlines.  Events will be held in the Dodd Research Center on April 21st and 22nd in conjunction with the Week In Humanities.  Artists Seth Tobocman, Stephen Dupont, Marshall Weber, Chantelle Bateman and Aaron Hughes will be holding talks, workshops and presenting artwork around the focus of politics and activism in art and war.  Students, community members, veterans and artists are encouraged to attend these events to provide a dynamic facilitation of how we utilize art, activism and memory to cope with war.

Art work will be on display in galleries as follows:

Aaron Hughes : Institute for the Humanities : College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Seth Tobocman : Contemporary Art Gallery : School of Fine Art

Stephen Dupont : Coop Bookstore : Downtown Stores

For a full list of events, please follow this link for the Week in Humanities.

Tutela Legal Archives

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A report came out on October 4th, that the offices of a well respected Human Rights monitoring organization in San Salvador, Tutela Legal, were closed by its governing body, the Archdiocese of El Salvador.  Contained in these offices are the archives of the organization dating back to the late 1970s when El Salvador’s US backed dictatorship was terrorizing the civilian population as a response to the cold war. Tutela Legal’s archives document disappearances and abuses which were recorded in hundreds of case files compiled from testimonies of witnesses and survivors.

Currently, the records remain in the hands of the Archdiocese, which has safely housed the organization since the state terror period as a continuation of Archbishop Oscar Romero’s vision of human rights and liberation.  In the mid-1990s, University of Colorado at Boulder Archivist Bruce Montgomery funded a mass reproduction of Tutela Legal’s archives in order to store facsimiles outside of the country at his institution.  During that period, an amnesty law was passed making any future legal convictions regarding war crimes or crimes against humanity during the conflict period illegal in El Salvador.  Effectively, ‘it’s been dealt with, now go away.’  The eventuality of records destruction or alteration in human rights organization records outside the archival sphere makes collaborative projects like this between CU Boulder and Tutela Legal a reminder of the tenuousness of grassroots organization archives as well as the necessity for outreach from archivists to solidify networks of information solidarity.

UConn Slutwalk 2013

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Slutwalk, a march to end victim blaming, will be held on Friday, September 27th on the UConn Campus.  This years’ Slutwalk is organized by the student group Revolution Against Rape and will be leading the event down Fairfield Way at 4pm.  Slutwalk is a direct action approach to sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape culture by challenging these aggressions of power and violence.

For information on how women have organized themselves in the past, consult the Archives’ Alternative Press Collection.  Some related items include:

Freeing our Lives: A Feminist Analysis of Rape Prevention (1978) PAM 346

Fighting Back: A Self-Defense Handbook (1977) PAM 347

Aegis; Magazine on Ending Violence Against Women

Off Our Backs

and the colorful Wimmen’s Comix

Be sure to check out our current exhibit in the Dodd Center Gallery:  A Private and Sensuous Encounter: women’s fine press books, deluxe books and bookworks, 1980-present