Coordinator:

Meredith McGill

Department of English, Rutgers

mlmcgill@rci.rutgers.edu

Beth Povinelli
Department of Anthropology, Columbia
ep2122@columbia.edu

Though the development of new electronic media has changed radically the ways in which knowledge is classified, stored and retrieved, the nature and function of archives has yet to receive sustained attention – especially among humanists. What, today, is an archive? Where is an archive? When is an archive? How do archives in part construct what they preserve? If each discipline of the humanities creates its own archive of texts, sounds, and/or images, do these different archives operate in similar ways? Is it possible to imagine (with Derrida) a “general archiviology, a word that does not exist but that could designate a general and interdisciplinary science of the archive”?

In May 2006 the CCA hosted a symposium to explore these questions.

In February 2007 the CCA will co-sponsor a second symposium to be held at Columbia University.