Research seminar: "African Literary Archives and Where to Find Them - A User's Manual"
- Date: 10 April 2025, 15:15–17:00
- Location: English Park, 16-1044
- Type: Seminar
- Lecturer: Maria Zirra
- Organiser: Department of English
- Contact person: Anna Watz
Higher seminar in English: In this short talk, I would like to demo and develop the idea of a workshop aimed at third year, MA and PhD students on using African digital archive repositories available online. This is based on a short interactive masterclass aimed at 16-18 year olds I have recently filmed for the Decolonizing the British Curriculum project at Salford University in Manchester.
I will discuss accessibility, format, curation, scanning practices and other possible challenges, as well as their use of audiovisual material and a kind of magazine aesthetics in the scanned material. Some examples of my research on visual poetry in the magazines from digital and analogue sources I have uncovered during my postdoc will illustrate these challenges and archive fever. Last but not least, I will reflect on Swedish collections of little magazines that might help students conceptualize African print cultures of yore.