April 22, Hall Center for the Humanities

4:00PM
Plenary-Open to the Public
Kate Dossett (Leeds University) Feminist Archives and Gender Trouble
Reception

April 23, Sabatini Multicultural Resource Center

8:00AM-8:30AM
Registration (Coffee/refreshment)
8:30AM-10:15AM
Roundtable IArchiving Queerness in the Midwest
10:15AM-10:30AM
Break
10:30AM-12:00PM
Panel IIAlternative Archives
12:00PM-1:00PM
Lunch
1:00PM-2:30PM
Panel IIIFinding Women in Archives
2:30PM-2:45PM
Break
2:45PM-4:15PM
Panel IVEthics and Reading against the Grain in Legal Archives
4:15PM-4:30PM
Break
4:30PM
Plenary-Open to the Public
Regina Kunzel (Princeton University) In Treatment: Psychiatry and the Archives of
Modern Sexuality

Roundtable IArchiving Queerness in the Midwest

Paper Title: Lost in the Trauma: Uncovering the 1970s
Katie Batza, Assistant Professor, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
batza@ku.edu
Abstract:
More than a decade ago, I conducted my first interview for my current book project on gay
health activism in the 1970s. I was incredibly nave to assume that since I was studying the
1970s, AIDS would not be an issue. Within minutes, my first interviewee was weeping as he
guided me through his old address books commenting on all the friends hed lost in the early
AIDS epidemic. Having now conducted dozens of oral histories to better understand the 1970s
gay community, the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s clearly plays an undeniably important role,
shaping not only the tenor and content of the interviews but also informing the memory and
telling of the 1970s. This paper begins by discussing the archival challenges inherent in studying
sexual minorities. From there, it draws upon a wide range of oral interviews and experiences to
examine how the AIDS crisis of the 1980s shapes the telling and understanding of the period that
came immediately before the AIDS epidemic. Embracing the notion of Archives interrupted in
many ways, this paper grapples with the particular challenges posed and techniques required
when conducting interviews that are so laden with trauma and loss. It then goes step further to
explore the difficulties in disentangling the tragedies of the 1980s from the experiences of the
1970s.
Paper Title: Uncovering Hidden Queer Youths Stories
Megan Paceley, Assistant Professor, School of Social Welfare
University of Kansas
mpaceley@ku.edu
Abstract:
Stories of queer youth growing up in the Midwest are lacking in the public queer discourse.
Research that aims to explore and understand the experiences of queer youth in the United States
tends to take place primarily in larger cities on the coasts (e.g. New York, Los Angeles). Rural
queer youth research has been conducted in the south (in Texas, Alabama, and Kentucky), yet
little is known or understood about the experiences of Midwestern queer youth. This presentation
will discuss the process, challenges, and successes involved in creating an archive on this
population.
During 2014, interviews were conducted with 34 self-identified queer youth living in rural
communities and small towns in one Midwestern state. During interviews, youth shared stories
about their experiences growing up in small towns, their access to supportive people and

resources, and the ways in which they constructed support and friendships in their schools and
communities.
The process in which these stories were collected included methodological roadblocks and
ethical challenges, as well as success, which will be shared in this presentation. For example,
ethical concerns included waiving parental consent for youth to participate du to the risk of harm
in requiring youth to disclose their queer identity to potentially unsupportive parents; the spaces
in which you chose to be interviewed (some very public spaces); and the dual roles of social
worker and qualitative researcher. Methodological roadblocks included recruiting participants for
the study when they all lived in rural and small towns.
This presentation will delve into the process of creating this archive. While challenges and
roadblocks will be discussed, the goal of the presentation is to share the successes of the project
and engage other scholars in uncovering hidden and non-existent archives.
Paper Title: Dont stick me in a folder! I have something to say: online and Open Access
Oral Histories of GLBTQ Kansas
Tami Albin, Associate Librarian, KU Libraries
University of Kansas
albin@ku.edu
Abstract:
I began under the Rainbow: Oral histories of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer
(GLBTQ) People in Kansas to document twenty life histories of self-identified GLBTQ people
over a two year period. Each narrator decided the type of access people would have to their
edited interviews. The majority of narrators opted to have their transcripts (and audio and video,
if applicable) accessible online to the world via KU ScholarWorks, KUs open access
instructional repository. Many felt that there would be limited visibility if their life histories were
located in a traditional archive. Seventy-seven oral histories later, with an additional waiting list
of one hundred and fifty interested GLBTQ Kansas, it has become apparent that those
participating in this project are not just seeking to interrupt, but to disrupt, disturb, and dislocate
heteronormative narratives found in various formats throughout archives in Kansas and in US
coastal normative GLBT archives. Narrators want and feel the need to be represented in the
annals of Kansas history, Kansas GLTBQ history, and more broadly in US and US GLBTQ
history.
This presentation will discuss the significance of creating this collection, challenges faced
throughout this project, and future considerations for continuing Under the Rainbow.
Paper Title: Advocacy and Fetishes in the Reading Room: The Future of the LGBTIQ
Archive at the Public Access Institution
Sarah K. Thomas, Copy Editor, Achievement & Assessment Institute
University of Kansas

skthomas@ku.edu
Abstract:
In her chapter in Serving LGBTIQ Library and Archive Users, Aimee Brown provides an
extensive history as well as the current state of LGBTIQ archives. As she describes how
mainstream instaurations are now accepting more and more queer archives, she also explains that
numerous facilities are also placing these archival documents online to reach a wider audience.
She details how numerous private archives are now using social media to reach the population.
However, with public institutions now collecting LGBTIQ archives and keeping papers
localized, is the community controlled queer archive still necessary? Having considered this
issue, I also question who will advocate for the contents of the queer archive in the public access
institution will not be unnecessarily regulated. However, with private queer archives and the
largest public facilities with substantial LGBTIQ holding located primarily in coastal, urban
settings, keeping papers localized to their communities to provide access becomes a significant
consideration in the donor process. In this presentation, I examine the necessity for both public
access and queer community institutions, and the implications of both on the LGBTIQ archive. I
also consider how institutions might reach out to small town and rural LGBTIQ individuals who
are archiving personal collections, and by what means these materials might be donated to
localized archives in the future.
Paper Title: Cowtown Queers: Facilitating the Emergence of Kansas Citys LGBT Past
Stuart Hinds, Assistant Dean of Special Collections and Archives
Miller Nichols Library, University of Missouri-Kansas City
hindss@umkc.edu
Abstract:
This session will focus on the launch and evolution of the Gay and Lesbian Archive of MidAmerica, a collecting initiative spearheaded by the LaBudde Special Collections Department of
Miller Nichols Library at the University of MissouriKansas City. Inaugurated in late 2009 as a
partnership with Kansas City Museum and the Jackson County (Mo.) Historical Society,
GLAMA collects, preserves, and makes accessible the documents and artifacts that reflect the
histories of the LGBT communities in the Kansas city region. Over time, the Archive has
evolved into an impressively successful effort now under the sole oversight of UMKC. Topics
considered will include: the variety of community organizations and individuals represented in
collection materials; embedding of GLAMA collections into course content; student and faculty
research; community partnerships; illumination of Kansas Citys roles in the larger national
struggle of gay and lesbian civil rights; factors contributing to GLAMAs success; and the
significance of such collections and their contribution to the development of a comprehensive
US LGBT historical narrative.

Panel IIAlternative Archives

Paper Title: Archiving Digital Ephemera: Transformations of Heterosexual Desire
Andrew Gilbert, PhD Student, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
awilliamgilbert@gmail.com
Abstract:
Among the central issues concerning digital archives and approaching Internet content as a
potential collection of digital artifacts are questions of the archives stability, access, and value.
This latter point becomes crucial when researching the myriad permutation of sexuality in online
spaces. How does one determine what should be archived and to what end? My dissertation
research has me playing digital archivist, where I must contend with the ephemerality of digital
artifacts as well as justification of their worth. My dissertation research is in part examining the
forum threads from the infamous website 4chan, a digital space known for its overt racism and
misogyny. Considered a cesspool of low Internet culture, Im tasked with archiving its
complex expressions of sexual desire that challenge simple readings of straight white male
identities. My paper will present specifically queer archival questions that have emerged from
my research process of straight white male porn threads where straight men express sexual desire
for queer sex while maintaining a heterosexual positionality. This research has required me to
both archive digital spaces that are constantly being deleted or banned as well as reading against
the grain to locate articulations of sexual desire that challenge hegemonic narratives. Thus,
threads marked for specific heterosexual genres of pornography become momentary archives for
articulating desires that do not easily mesh with the video content of the thread. As a queer
archive practice, the importance of these threads is not the pornography but the discursive
context they are situated withinthe user comments. The questions I ask include whether these
constitute archives of desire and in what context? These are clearly marked as straight white
male spaces, but the ephemeral threads of queer sexual desires are worth of archiving as they
potentially illustrate a heterosexuality in crisisor at least a contested state of transformation.

Paper Title: We Didnt Know This Would Mean Anything: Lessons from the Leather
Archive & Museum
Elizabeth J. Stigler, PhD Student, Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
EJStigler@ku.edu
Abstract:
During the summer of 2014 I served as the Womens Leather History Project Archival Intern at
the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) in Chicago, IL> the most daunting tastk I undertook

while at the LA&M was a project about the Chicago S.L.U.T.S. (Society of Leatherwomyn
United Towards Sadomasochism). Initially it appeared as thought the only information the
LA&M had about the S.L.U.T.S. was a club banner and a tee-shirt. However, through a lengthy
and often counter intuitive process I was able to uncover and document a rich history of one of
Chicagos only all women S/M leather club operating in the 1990s. As a direct result of my
research I was able to identify and contact several former S.L.U.T.S. members and in March of
2015, I moderated a public panel at the LA&M where those same members shared their stories.
Conducting this research was often fraught with complications and dead ends, improperly
labeled collections, and a general lack of readily available contextual information about the
group. My presentation would address the challenges one faces when conducting archival
research on an all-womens sexual subcultural organization whose heyday was during the
infancy of the internet.
Additionally, I will discuss the sexually charged affective power of the Leather archives
themselves. While the archival experience has been romanticized (ie. The smell of documents,
the dust in the air, etc) there is virtually nothing about the sexually explicit power of working in a
kink archive, surrounded by objects and ephermera that were designed to induce arousal.
Acknowledging and addressing this power is one of the ways we can begin to queer the archive
and deconstruct puritanical notions about how to properly relate to archival material.
Paper Title: Womens Petitions and the Gendered Obligations of the King in the Spanish
Empire
Irene Olivares, PhD candidate in Modern European History
University of Kansas
irene.olivares@ku.edu
Abstract:
The archives of the Spanish empire are full of petitions that women sent to the monarchy. Noble
women denounced oppressive and inefficient officials, while ordinary widows and poor women
sought assistance and justice. Through these exchanges women voiced the expectations they had
for the king, and held him accountable to these standards. Despite the high number of these
letters and petitions, we still know little about the interactions between women and the king and
the possible imprint that women left on the empires policies through their petitions. This
presentation discusses petitions that women sent to the monarchy during the reigns of Philip II
through Philip IV (1556-1665). The purpose of this investigation is two-fold. The first goal is to
interrogate the expectations that women had for the king and to consider how these expectations
shaped royal policies. The second goal is to contribute to our understanding of Spanish royal
authority by showcasing the affective dimensions of the kings duties that are reflected in his
correspondence with women. Historians have traditionally relied on administrative documents
between the king and royal officials to investigate royal authority. These administrative
documents provide a skewed understanding of political power because they were written by men
and deal primarily with the gendered prerogatives of men. Women, on the other hand, wrote to

the king from their positions as concerned wives and mothers, or as widows in need of help.
These positions summoned concerns and responsibilities of the king that were unique to
womens roles, such as the kings duty to console and to nurture. By rescuing womens petitions
from the archives, this paper highlights the full range of the gendered obligations of the king,
which included not only showcasing masculine military might but also feminine affection.
Paper Title: (Un)Disciplined Subjects: Postcolonial Life Writing and Contemporary
Imperial Discourses
Creighton Nicholas Brown, PhD Student,
University of Kansas
creighton.brown@ku.edu
Abstract:
In (Un)Disciplined Subjects: Postcolonial Life Writing and Contemporary Imperial
Discourses, I argue that postcolonial life writing challenges power and discipline by questioning
who is able to produce knowledges and what knowledges merit consideration in contemporary
imperial discourses. Moreover, I contend life-writing textsmemoirs, autobiographies, etc.
function as personal archives that catalog and critique the observing, documenting, and policing
of subjects as they move across postcolonial borders and are contained in institutions such as
schools, prisons, detention centers, and refugee camps. Methodologically, (Un)Disciplined
Subjects draws on the genealogical and archeological work of Foucault to lay bare the ways in
which power produces certain privileged knowledges about subjects while obscuring others.
Further, I employ Giorgio Agambens development of Foucaults discourse analyses by arguing
that subjects are not simply known through discoursethey become discourse. That is to say,
subjects bodies manifest legal discourses and are reduced from individuated subjects to
corporeal objects of discursive study for disciplining institutions. I argue this is where
postcolonial life writing as personal archive makes an intervention into contemporary imperial
discourses: Postcolonial life writing re-associates the body and the subject by incorporating
alternative knowledges not produced through official contemporary imperial discourses.
(Un)Disciplined Subjects contributes to the small, yet growing body of postcolonial life
writing scholarshipan area of life writing in need of more in-depth studyand engages with
in-progress academic and public discussions about social justice and human rights.

Panel IIIFinding Women in Archives

Paper Title: Rewriting Iranian Women into History: A Case Study of Bibi Khanum
Astarabadis Maayeb al-Rejal (Vices of Men)
Najmeh Moradiyan Rizi, PhD Student, Department of Film and Median Studies
University of Kansas
najmehmr@ku.edu

Abstract:
In recent decades there has been a surge in looking back at the historical ruptures and cultural
transformations of Iranian society in order to underline both the discursive and practical changes
of the society regarding the notions of gender and sexuality and their effects on Iranian womens
lives in the past and present. The significance of archival research in this regard particularly
shows itself in the construction and enforcement of the objectives of womens movement in
contemporary Iran through which this movement attempts to provide a well-grounded national
feminist discourse challenging the segregated-gender boundaries and unequal social practices
and legal laws of todays Iran. In this regard, Womens Worlds in Qajar Iran (WWQI), the
digital archive of the Harvard College Library, is a crucial asset as through its open-access
system and collaborative collections with museums and institutions inside Iran, the archive
provides valuable documented social and cultural histories of Qajar women during the reign of
Qajar dynasty (1786-1925) which can be used to shed light on the familial, social and political
activities of the nineteenth-century Iranian women.
One of the important documents of WWQI is a manuscript, called Maayeb al-Rejal (Vices of
Men), written by a Qajar noble woman, Bibi Khanum Astarabadi, in 1894. In this paper, I
provide an archival case studies of Astarabadis manuscript as one of the early Iranian feminist
texts giving a broad, yet thorough description of gender dynamics and sexual practices of Iranian
society in the nineteenth century. As the majority of the historical studies on Iranian women point
to the turn of the twentieth century and, more specifically, the 1905-11 period of the
Constitutional Revolution, y analyzing Vices of Men I argue that Astarabadis text not only
signals the important gender and sexual changes happening in Iran in the nineteenth century due
to the rise of economic, political, and cultural interactions between Iran and the West, but it also
contradicts the Eurocentric view of Qajar women as silent and passive and showcases the
formation of Iranian womens language and voice in the literary and social worlds pushing back
the origins of feminism in Iran to the years prior to the Constitutional Revolution.
Paper Title: Reading Keats, Reading Women: Gender and Cognition in the British
Romantic Archive
Renee Harris, PhD (ABD), British Romantic Literature
University of Kansas
harris.trenee@ku.edu
Abstract:
Adrienne Rich parallels womens tremendous powers of intuitive identification and sympathy
with other people to John Keatss poetic model of Negative Capability (1975), a condition of
living in uncertainties where the identities of others continually press upon and merge into ones
own. Negative Capability enables a fluidity of identity that dissolves the ego boundaries of
individual lived experience in such a way that goes beyond a sympathetic identification that is
merely imagined. Rather, Negative Capability broaches shared feeling and cooperative cognition.
It produces a joint aesthetic experience, blurring subject and object, author and reader. I propose

this same cognitive and material phenomenon is at play with Keatss mentor Charles Cowden
Clarkes commonplace book and the practice of commonplacing more generally. Clarkes
commonplace book is a key artefact of the Keats archive, as the poet and his friend likely read
from it during poets time at Enfield school and his private literary studies with Clarke. Indeed,
other members of Keatss larger literary circle borrowed the book as a resource for poetic and
journalistic publications. More than a private journal, this artefact became a trusted literary
record from which others could read and compose.
In his commonplace book, Clarke quotes liberally from when writers like Mary Wollstonecraft
and Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Keatss famously relied upon women writers as sources for his
own style and content. Yet, he writes in his letters he has not a right feelings towards Women,
and, elsewhere, facing complaints that a poem was unfit for ladies, Keats declares he writes
only for men. For this presentation, I bring the problem of Keatss misogyny to bear on his
supposedly feminine Negative Capability and on an archive of cooperative composition that
shows him quoting from, alluding to, and repurposing literary selections from women writers for
personal and public use. Ultimately, I use his cognitive poetics model to judge the ethics of a
permeable, sympathetic self that can enter the space of another, especially a feminine other,
while refusing to be similarly penetrated.
Paper Title: English Compositions as Identity Construction: Revisiting the Kate I. Hansen
Collection
Sarah Polo, PhD Student, Rhetoric and Composition
University of Kansas
polosarah1@gmail.com
Abstract:
Housed at the University of Kansas Spencer Research Library in Lawrence, Kansas, the Kate I.
Hansen Collection has been the focus of previous scholarly interest. A Kansas native and 1905
KU graduate, Hansen is most studied because of her important work as a missionary, teacher, and
later dean at the Miyagi College in Japan. In utilizing the archival materials in Hansens
collection, scholars have largely ignored what I argue is an important and revealing set of print
materialsHansens thirty-three handwritten assignments from her Advanced English
Composition course during the Spring of 1900.
My work closely analyzes Hansens compositions, situating their content within scholarship on
turn-of-the-century writing instruction and arguing that, though not previously given proper
consideration, these school writings shed light on several important issues: the subject position of
women in early academia, the development of writing pedagogy as evidenced by the assignments
themselves and written instructor feedback contained in them, and, perhaps most interestingly,
clues to Hansens own identity construction as a young woman who would depart just seven
years later for what Bales, Bales, and Harbin title their biography of Hansen The Grandest
Mission on Earth, her missionary work and teaching in Japan.

Paper Title: Researching Against the Grain: Manuscript History and Recuperating the
Flawed Translation of Christine de Pizans Epistre Othea
Misty Schieberle, Associate Professor of English
University of Kansas
mschiebe@ku.edu
Abstract:
Christine de Pizan (1364-c. 1430) was the first Western woman to make her living as a writer,
and one of her most popular works during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the Epistre
Othea (c. 1400), a text that sought to counter misogynist narratives, establish authority for
herself as a writer, and advise Frances most powerful men how to be good rulers. Long
unavailable in a modern edition, the Othea was first printed in 1977 and then 1999. Literary
scholars have always accepted as the best manuscript British Library Harley MS 4431, once
owned by the Queen of France, expensively illustrated, and possibly containing Christines final
revisions to her text. My paper argues that this has blinded scholars to the text of the Othea that
circulated more widely, a version that opens up discussions of how male scribes, translators, and
editors revised or altered a woman authors text and progressive views of gender.
I have extensively analyzed the English translation, the Little Bible of Knighthood (c. 1460),
which all prior scholars have referred to as a flawed translation. However, my archival
research demonstrates that this is a scholarly error born of comparing this translation to the
Harley best copy, without taking into account the rest of the Otheas archival history. I have
discovered that the Bibell instead translates a later French copy of the Othea, c. 1450, with
unique scribal insertions and variants, a version has been entirely neglected by scholars. While
this modified version of the Othea cannot be traced to Christine de Pizans pen, it nevertheless
exists in the majority of French manuscripts, and it is the version codified into print by sixteenthcentury editors. In other words, these archival copies offer perhaps not the best text of the
Othea but instead the most popular version, known to the majority of readers prior to the
twentieth century. This paper presents evidence of major alterations that involve gender to
demonstrate the continued importance of archival research to studies of gender, Christine de
Pizan, and literary works more generally.

Panel IVEthics and Reading against the Grain in Legal Archives

Paper Title: The Criminal and the Queer: Searching for Sodomy in the Nebraska State
Archives
Brian M. Trump, PhD Student, History
University of Kansas

bmtrump@ku.edu
Abstract:
Criminal proceedings and court documents have long served as one of the primary source bases
for historians of deviant sexuality. Offering some of the clearest examples of queer sexuality in
the archive, these sources provide many historians with an entry point into explorations of the
queer past. These sources, however, are not without their shortcomings. This paper will serve as
an exploration of the issues associated with searching for and reading the queer past in 20th
century sodomy records housed in the Nebraska State Historical Society. In particular, I will
focus on the conflation of violence and consent in court dockets and criminal indictments and the
difficulties this creates in the process of reclaiming the queer past. In Nebraska, the sodomy
statute was used to cover both acts of rape and consent, and the nuances of these cases were
often overlooked when filling out court appearance dockets and indictments. The broad
application of the sodomy statute calls for both a rethinking of how sodomy is positioned in
historiographies of queerness and the history of sexual violence, as well different ways of
reading criminal court sources. In this paper, I will explore what it means to read sodomy
against the grain and how such an approach can illuminate how questions of consent and
violence structure the trajectory of the legal process. In doing so, I will address how a working
knowledge of laws and legal structures and reading external sources against those produced by
the State are both necessary acts of research in order to understand the nuances of violence and
consent in the archive.
Paper Title: Semi Fiction in the Archives: Gender and Trial Transcripts
Brian Donovan, Associate Professor, Sociology
University of Kansas
bdonovan@ku.edu
Abstract:
This paper reflects on the epistemological dilemmas I encountered while researching my
forthcoming book Respectability on Trial: Sex Crimes in New York City, 19001918.
I used approximately 16,000 pages of trial transcripts from the John Jay Trial Transcript
Collection to understand how seduction, rape, pimping, and sodomy trials pivoted on emergent
and decaying notions of sexual respectability. My analysis of Progressive-Era sex crimes drew
inspiration from Natalie Zemon Daviss landmark study Fiction in the Archives. Davis
encouraged historians to focus on cultural meanings expressed in historical documents. Instead
of using archival material as a record of past events, she argued, the archives better serve as a
window into the ideologies and mentalitis of a particular time, group, or culture. In this light,
trial transcripts considered in my study were less valuable as records of what happened and
were more valuable as imprints of particular ideas about sex, gender, men, and women. At the
same time, however, it is nave to think that the transcripts were incapable of conveying past
events and experiences. Furthermore, rendering the sex crime narratives as fictions or fictional
posed a risk of undermining the lived realities of the courtroom participants. The dual quality of

transcripts as both an imprint of ideology and as a record of experience required careful

consideration as to the possibilities and limitations of these documents. I discuss the reading and
writing strategies I used to overcome the interpretive problems posed by trial transcripts.
Paper Title: Her Story Believed: Finding the Women in Cases of Father-Daughter Incest
Mary Louisa Williams, PhD Student, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
University of Kansas
mlwilliams@ku.edu
Abstract:
When investigating legal attitudes toward sexual violence and the punishment of it, some of the
most valuable sources are court and prison records. Yet these documents primarily deal with the
perpetrators of the crimes, not the victims. How, then, do we tell the stories of the victims if they
are only a minor player in much of the available written evidence? This paper will discuss that
problem in the context of cases of father-daughter incest in turn-of-the-century Kansas, using the
archives of the Kansas State Historical Society. In order to uncover the experiences and voices
of the women in these cases, it is necessary to read traditional sources against the grain, as well
as to look for sources that are perhaps less obviously related to the topic. This paper will also
discuss the ethics of searching for the stories of victims, and the uncertain process of ensuring
that further violence is not inflicted upon them. By attempting to give voice to their experiences,
we must be wary of coopting them for our own gain, as well as remaining aware of the power
dynamics inherent in the documents being studied. Attempting to understand an individual
primarily through state-generated documents defines them solely by their encounters with that
power, and thus removes their agency, relegating them to the status of victim once again. By
being conscious of this tendency, as well as reading State documents against the grain, we can
find the voices and identities of the female victims of incest that are located in the archive and
tell their stories, both ethically and accurately.
Paper Title: Power, Ethics, and Archive Tales: A discussion of Ethical Research in the
Archive
Carolina Costa Candal, PhD Student, Political Science
University of Kansas
ccostacandal@ku.edu
Abstract:
Archival research using data in the public domain is rarely subjected to ethical reviews by
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). As a result, the discussion of ethical research practices in the
archive has been limited in comparison to the ethical scrutiny other forms of qualitative research
have received. The current literature gives archival scholars some guidance when dealing with
two general concerns: (1) conducting research involving sensitive topics, and (2) ensuring

anonymity in the sources. However, scholars are likely to encounter more than documents when
going into archive, and may find themselves in difficult situations that raise ethical questions.
This presentation seeks to broaden the discussion of ethics in the archive in the hopes of creating
a more comprehensive guide of ethical practices for novice and experienced scholars. Using a
feminist methodological perspective, I examine archive stories as ethnographies of the archive in
order to identify potential sources of ethical problems. Some of these concerns include questions
of informed consent and power dynamics scholars might encounter in, and after, the archive.