Zawacki, Andrew
W 1 :50 PM
Park Hall 259
ARCHIVE FEVER
This workshop will push each student to devise and carry out a semester-long project making explicit use of an archive—not just history, in other words, but the materials and media which record and define history, whether personal, cultural, national, or some combination. As models, the seminar will engage exemplary creative works based in archival research. Poetry may include relatively recent work by Susan Howe, Alice Oswald, C.D. Wright, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Don Mee Choi, M. NourbeSe Philip, Tyehimba Jess, Bhanu Kapil, Srikanth Reddy, Victoria Chang, Mark Nowak, and Stephen Collis and Jordan Scott. We might begin with Charles Reznikoff’s seminal archival work Testimony, and along the way we’ll study both Arlette Farge's The Allure of the Archives and Jacques Derrida’s theoretical treatise Archive Fever. The course will also explore prose books by Allison Cobb, Palestinian writer Adania Sibli, and German author Alexander Kluge. CWP alum Johnny Damm and essayist Mary-Kim Arnold will both visit the course when we tackle their books. We may devote some attention to short fiction from Jorge Luis Borges and John Keene; music by postmodern composers like William Basinski and The Caretaker; and short experimental films and found footage projects by director-curators as diverse as Bill Morrison, Sky Hopinka, Guy Maddin, Chantal Akerman, Caroline Monnet, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Stan Brakhage, Chris Marker, and Zora Neale Hurston. Early in semester, the workshop will visit the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library on campus, so that students have a handle on materials available there and how to make use of them.