CANCELLED ACTIVITY

Most digital archiving projects that have surfaced over the past twenty years have been driven by efforts to make archival materials more accessible. In many ways, the turn to digital archives may seem to be an obvious extension of the archival profession’s longstanding commitment to access. Yet as the archival process transforms historical materials into archival objects, these objects undergo an epistemological transformation that it is important to attend to, particularly through digitization. In this talk, Dr. Rawson will discuss his work directing the Digital Transgender Archive and will offer some reflections on the politics and implications of making transgender history more accessible.

K.J. Rawson is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the College of the Holy Cross. He is also the director of the Digital Transgender Archive, an online digital repository for transgender-related historical materials. His research and teaching interests include composition, rhetoric, digital media and LGBT studies. His scholarship focuses on the rhetorical dimensions of queer and transgender archiving in both traditional and digital collections. With Eileen E. Schell, he co-edited Rhetorica in Motion: Feminist Rhetorical Methods and Methodologies (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010) and his scholarship has also appeared in Archivaria, Enculturation, Present Tense, QED, TSQ, and several edited collections.

Archive is both a series of talks organised by La Virreina Centre de la Imatge and a book. The earlier speakers this year were Joan M. Schwartz, Eric Ketelaar and Ramon Alberch. On 10 October, K.J. Rawson will bring the 2017 series to a close with his talk entitled “Access in the Digital Era: the Digital Transgender Archive and Digitising Policies”.