This research project builds on my dissertation research to develop archival theory around the history of disability, colonialism and natural history museums. It examines the ways in which disability has played an integral role—although it has often been erased or obscured—within the establishment of one institution: The Field Museum of Natural History, which was founded out of Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. Providing much-needed attention to archival erasure, I address multiple museum and archival processes to advance critical readings of disability in history and to build new frameworks of addressing erasure through archival descriptive, organizational, digitization and preservation practices. For example, by tracing the materiality of one chemical used in the preservation of museum biological collections, I highlight a constellation of politics in proximity to disability: its connection to environmental justice, a history rooted in colonialism and parallel histories of historically feminized labor being exposed to carcinogenic substances. This research also draws on information studies and science and technology studies to show how contemporary technologies used by archives and museums—while purporting to increase access and innovate new experiences—can unintentionally embody, replicate, and expand colonial knowledge in digital spheres.

Publications on this research:

Brilmyer, Gracen. 2022. “Toward a Crip Provenance: Centering Disability in Archives through Its Absence.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 9, no. 1. https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol9/iss1/3.

Disabled people are difficult to find in history, often relegated to asylum documentation, criminal records, and medical files. As such, the history of disability is often considered separate from that of other discourses, institutions, and, therefore, public conceptions of how disabled people have played a part in history. And the way disability has been historicized, in turn, informs how disabled people are seen and treated today: despite the rise of disability justice and activism, disability continues to be predominantly conceptualized in medical terms, which perpetuates stereotypical understandings of disabled people. Considering the abundance of such types of records that tell one side of disability history, this research considers how disabled people use archives and imagine themselves in history through interviews with disabled scholars, artists, activists, and other researchers. Part of this research focuses on the materials themselves and the affective impacts of archival representation: as disabled people witness disabled people—or even their absence—in history, I investigate how they relate to disabled people across time. And part of this research focuses on the affective impacts archival spaces: the ways in which archival policies, procedures, and spaces are configured as well as the ways materials are treated and processed all impact the ways in which disabled people feel a sense of belonging.

_____

Publications on this research:

Brilmyer, Gracen. 2022. “‘They Weren’t Necessarily Designed with Lived Experiences of Disability in Mind’: The Affect of Archival In/Accessibility and ‘Emotionally Expensive’ Spatial Un/Belonging.” Archivaria, Fall/Winter 2022 https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13869.

Brilmyer, Gracen Mikus. 2021. “'I’m also prepared to not find me. It's great when I do, but it doesn't hurt if I don't': crip time and anticipatory erasure for disabled archival users.” Archival Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-021-09372-1.

Brilmyer, Gracen M. “‘It Could Have Been Us in a Different Moment. It Still Is Us in Many Ways’: Community Identification and the Violence of Archival Representation of Disability.” In Sustainable Digital Communities, edited by Anneli Sundqvist, Gerd Berget, Jan Nolin, and Kjell Ivar Skjerdingstad, 480–86. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43687-2_38.

This research was partially funded through UCLA's Graduate Summer Research Mentorship (GSRM) Award.

As a sibling project to "Disabled Archival Users & the Affects of Representation" and in collaboration with Veronica Denison, this research investigates the ways in which disabled archivists navigate the archival field and archival labor. In a field where being required to lift 50 lbs is standard in job descriptions, we investigate affective impacts of archives on disabled archivists. This research also utilizes semi-structured interviews with disabled people to tease out the affective impacts of archives on the disabled people who work within them. We plan to begin interviews in Fall 2020.

As a companion project to my academic research, I am in the beginning phases of planing and building a community-based digital archive entitled, Disabled Pasts, Crip Futures Archive. Informed by my conversations with disabled communities, this digital archive will first build connections with existing repositories and aggregate materials on and about ‘disability’ in existing archives—that may not be labeled or described as such. Additionally, it will also actively collect and digitize materials from disabled activists, scholars, artists, and community members, as to digitally capture history in the making. In thinking about the history of disabled people, this project also points towards our futures—how a community-driven archive can shape how we want to be remembered and understood through records in the future—while also embodying the disability rights slogan, “Nothing About Us Without Us.” The digital platform would provide disabled people opportunities to submit materials for digitization as well as to redescribe or add context to existing records, so that records on and about disability can have complex and multifaceted representation. I plan on applying for funding, running community-based workshops, and starting to build the archive in Fall 2020.