Michelle Caswell: “Documenting South Asian American Experiences of Islamophobia”

Michelle is not only an Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an affiliated faculty member with the Department of Asian American Studies, but also the lead organizer of the Archivists Against Collective. Therefore, she is already very familiar with the perspectives of the respective communities as well as an expert on the potential of archives and their social impact. Her project, a documentation of the South Asian American Experiences of Islamophobia, is situated within the framework of the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), an independent, nonprofit, community-based organization that she co-founded.

For Michelle, it was crucial to shape the concept carefully, because the project aims at publishing “stories from a community that is particularly targeted in the political climate in the U.S. In the worst-case scenario, personal experiences made publicly available could in turn be used to go after community members during a time when they are particularly vulnerable to state persecution.” Therefore, Michelle decided to use the seed funding to put together a board of advisers, drawing on a supportive network of researchers, activists and artists from the South Asian American community. Questions discussed with the board include the appropriacy of Islamophobia as an umbrella term, possible audiences, and the groups and topics that should be included in such a documentation. Based on the discussion and feedback, the project idea was refined, taking into account the recommendations while avoiding the ethical pitfalls. The following steps were defined: “For the next stage of this project we plan to video-record South Asian American community leaders sharing their reflections and stories of archival materials related to the long history of Islamophobia. We have asked our advisory group members to record their own stories as the final stage of this planning project. Several of these videos have been submitted and we are currently formulating a plan for moving forwarding and expanding the project.”

Ivana Stankovic: “Factories revisited – A digital archive on the position of Bosnian factories in the social memory”

“As sites of everyday life as well as productivity, factories represent economic and social development in post-Yugoslavian countries. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is even one more dimension to them, as they were turned into military facilities during the war period and subsequently became sites of post-war economic decline.” Against this backdrop, Ivana and her team worked out a concept to document the social history of industrial plants in her home country Bosnia and Herzegovina. It aimes at mapping the sites and gathering information about their history to provide a digital basis for future research. As an independent memory work professional, Ivana didn’t have access to existing infrastructure and set out to create the archive from scratch. Together with her team, she started by collecting material: evidence from the “golden age”, documenting initialization, employment numbers, products as well as leaflets and annual financial reports, but also data about the war period, privatization and the present condition. Plus, she developed an interview methodology and conducted ten initial interviews with former workers. Ivana regards these sources as a pillar of the whole project: “Some of the greatest supporters throughout the process most definitely were our interviewees who gladly opened their homes and personal archives to us, helping us not only by providing much needed information and material, but also by putting us in touch with other informants.”

However, Ivana’s project suffered a set-back, because the arms factory in Konjic she was planning to document was taken over by the Ministry of the Interior and access as well research was denied. This led Ivana and her team to readjust their focus on gendered memory and to zoom in on the so-called “factory of women” in another town. Another major challenge was even more difficult to overcome: building an online platform for the documentation. Ivana reached out to colleagues working on digital archives, but their technical solutions turned out to be inadequate for the purpose – among other things because they weren’t supporting the Bosnian alphabet.

Technical feasibility continues to be a major issue that delays the publication of the platform. At present, a beta version is being tested – so hopefully, the social history of Bosnian factories will soon see the light of the digital day.