Personal Archive Assignment

Assignment created by Dr. Krista Grensavitch, Ph.D. and Abbi Nye, MLIS.

Overview

This semester-long, scaffolded assignment empowers students by asking them to assemble a Personal Archive (PA) that documents their experience/s during 2020, including but not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, which in this current iteration, responded to members of law enforcement murdering George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color).

Along with helping students record and critically engage with their lived reality, this assignment has several purposes:

To help students explore what an archive is, understand how archives are political, and that archives are often the product of heteronormative, patriarchal, white supremacist institutions
To introduce the concept of symbolic annihilation and then imagine how creating a personal archive can counter systemic forces that silence, erase, deny, and minimize
To help students develop an understanding of intersectional analysis, utilizing it as a lens to interrogate mass movement, other, and self
To build radical empathy, both in and out of the classroom

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

University of Wisconsin–MilwaukeeLibraries

Personal Archive Assignment

Overview

Introductory Materials

Sample Assignment Prompts

Did you use this assignment? Do you have questions? Please email us!