This workshop, facilitated by NC State researchers and librarians, will create an opportunity for participants to learn, share, and imagine new practices of archival storytelling and care. Facilitators will outline different approaches in personal, community, and institutional settings and will provide participants with tools to consider how to preserve their community stories and artifacts by donating to or creating their archives. Facilitators will work alongside participants to engage with questions about how this type of memory work can situate our lived experiences by drawing on the past and present to imagine the future. Facilitators include Ericka Christie, a Ph.D. candidate in NC State’s Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media program whose research focuses on theories and practices of archiving activism, and librarians Virginia Ferris and Shima Hosseininasab from the Special Collections Research Center, who will share their personal and professional experiences working with archival materials, encountering silences in archives where voices and evidence of the past have gone missing, and looking to innovative approaches to archives as sources of community knowledge and as inspiration for research and creativity. Attendees will walk away with ideas and roadmaps for understanding institutional, community, or personal archival projects and a sense of how the stories of their lived experiences are essential contributions to our community's past, present, and future. About the Presenters Virginia Ferris is the Lead Librarian for Outreach and Engagement for the Special Collections Research Center at NC State University Libraries. She has a background in oral history, archival research and processing, and community engagement. In her current role, she focuses on engaging students and other audiences with special collections to build awareness of how they can access, interpret, advocate, create, and contribute to archives and history.
Shima Hosseininasab is an instruction and outreach librarian for Special Collections. She has a Ph.D. in Public History from North Carolina State University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Tehran. She specializes in architectural history, cultural heritage, historic preservation, and archives. She is committed to making historical resources accessible to community members.
Ericka Christie is a fourth-year Ph. D. candidate in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at N.C. State University. Her current research focus is on archival and digital rhetorics, particularly as they relate to social movements, community organizing, and public memory.
