How does sex appear—and dys-appear—in the archive? What is sex? How, and why, does it become something to be archived? This course will consider various archives of sex, sexuality, and gender to ask: what is sex? What is the archive? What are the ethics of the archive? And the ethics of archiving sex? Finally, this course will consider the responsibilities we have to the archive—and beyond it. Partnering with the Prison Library Support Network (PLSN), coursework will inform our relationship with incarcerated researchers and scholars. Our partnership with PLSN will involve working with Archivist Actions to research various abolitionist carceral archive projects and producing research for incarcerated scholars. Through this work, we will seek to understand our positionality as scholars and learners within a broader landscape that includes deep and wide understandings of the archive and of sex.
- Teacher: Reuven Goldberg