Archives of Decolonial Futures (links to conference website)

March 28-29, 2024 | Dartmouth College

An interdisciplinary conference on archives, empire, and Asia
Hayward Room | Hanover Inn Dartmouth

Click here to register! This conference is open to the public with no registration required, but you can register to receive additional details and updates.

From Hmong refugees and transnational Korean adoptees to the Khmer Rouge regime’s secret police and US military bases across the Pacific, archives have become a particular focus for scholars studying Asia and its historically overlooked people, things, and places. Situated at the intersections of colonialism, war, military occupation, and postcolonial nation-building, how do we interpret and analyze archives when studying Asia? How does the concept of the archive resonate with those who lack the privilege of written languages? In envisioning decolonial futures in Asia and the Pacific, how can we reconsider the role of archives? This interdisciplinary conference invites scholars who actively engage with the question of “archives” to offer alternative theoretical and historical perspectives on Asia.

This two-day conference will feature four panels that explore the critical intersections between archives and Asian/American studies. The conference invites scholars from diverse humanistic and related social science disciplines who wish to engage with or challenge archives in the context of studying Asia and its colonial entanglements. Through these discussions, the conference aims to foster meaningful conversations surrounding Asian studies, Asian American studies, critical ethnic studies, empire studies, and other related fields.

The specific themes to be explored at the conference may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• What does it entail to read or contemplate “against” archives in the study of Asia?
• How can one revive, uncover, or breathe new life to archives through cross-archival readings?
• How can one critically approach the gaps and omissions within archives?
• How can archives become a critical space of interdisciplinary collaboration and community activism?
• How can one collect and document what has been deemed unrecordable or unarchivable?
• How can archives serve as a narrative form to imagine alternative possibilities?
• How does archival thinking enhance various methods of writing and scholarly engagement?

Co-sponsored by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, the Leslie Center for the Humanities, and the Department of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages.