Bones, fire, and falcons: Loving things in medieval Europe

In three loving encounters between humans and nonhumans, this article explores different approaches to material love in medieval Europe. Beginning with an English bishop who attempted to eat the bone relic of Saint Mary Magdalene, it first considers how a series of medieval thinkers imagined God's love as mediated primarily through the consumption of matter. Further, it shows how the medieval commercialization of relics enabled a subversive, quasi-mystical counter tradition that located loving experiences within the unmediated physicality, or thingness, of Christian artifacts themselves. Moving next to Saint Francis of Assisi (d.1226), the article explores a curious case of self-negating devotion to fire. While contextualizing the saint's love against a background of scholastic materialism and ecstatic mysticism, it explores how fire gained a unique onto-theological status as the material essence of both love and the heavens in the 1200s. Finally, turning to love for animals, the analysis explores the astonishing care shown to falcons by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II (d.1250). While surveying a series of trends in medieval ways of loving creatures, the article stresses how the emperor's radical empathy for beasts allowed him temporarily to surrender his sovereignty, melding the interest of king and bird. Just like the mystical theology that underpinned much of medieval devotion, it argues, these three loving encounters were all essentially structured as self-annihilating journeys into a “oneness” with the material landscape. Considering the ongoing threads of this forgotten type of self-erasing love, these medieval encounters can have intriguing implications for debates in the environmental humanities today.

Safety, Collaboration, and Empowerment

In order to undertake liberatory memory work, engage effectively with communities and individuals, and centre people rather than records in their work, archival organizations must be aware of trauma and its effects. This article introduces the concept of trauma-informed practice to archives and other memory organizations. Trauma-informed practice is a strengths-based approach for organizations that acknowledges the pervasiveness of trauma and the risk and potential for people to be retraumatized through engagement with organizations such as archives and seeks to minimize triggers and negative interactions. It provides a framework of safety and offers a model of collaboration and empowerment that recognizes and centres the expertise of the individuals and communities documented within the records held in archives. Traumainformed practice also provides a way for archivists to practically implement many of the ideas discussed in the literature, including liberatory memory work, radical empathy, and participatory co-design. This article proposes several areas where a trauma-informed approach may be useful in archives and may lead to trauma-informed archival practice that provides better outcomes for all: users, staff, and memory organizations in general. Applying trauma-informed archival practice is multidimensional. It requires the comprehensive review of archival practice, theory, and processes and the consideration of the specific needs of individual memory organizations and the people who interact with them. Each organization should implement trauma-informed practice in the way that will achieve outcomes appropriate for its own context. These out comes can include recognizing and acknowledging past wrongs, ensuring safety for archives users and staff, empowering communities documented in archives, and using archives for justice and healing.

A collection under construction: trans-versing access with the Tranny Fest Collection

The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, formerly known as Tranny Fest, was the first trans film festival in North America, having been founded in 1997. The Tranny Fest Collection (2006-26) is held by the GLBT Historical Society Archives & Museum, and contains one hundred and sixty-nine video and audiotapes, which have gone unprocessed since their deposit in 2006. This thesis examines the barriers to access faced by the Collection primarily using a radical empathy archival framework, as theorized by Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, in order to reveal the power dynamics at play when archiving intersectionally marginalized collections and the resulting ethical responsibilities. Through an exploration of the Collection’s dubious legal ownership, copyright complications and preservation issues, this thesis aims to provide solutions to improve the overall accessibility of the tapes in the Tranny Fest Collection, and similarly marginalized collections.

A collection under construction: trans-versing access with the Tranny Fest Collection

The San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, formerly known as Tranny Fest, was the first trans film festival in North America, having been founded in 1997. The Tranny Fest Collection (2006-26) is held by the GLBT Historical Society Archives & Museum, and contains one hundred and sixty-nine video and audiotapes, which have gone unprocessed since their deposit in 2006. This thesis examines the barriers to access faced by the Collection primarily using a radical empathy archival framework, as theorized by Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, in order to reveal the power dynamics at play when archiving intersectionally marginalized collections and the resulting ethical responsibilities. Through an exploration of the Collection’s dubious legal ownership, copyright complications and preservation issues, this thesis aims to provide solutions to improve the overall accessibility of the tapes in the Tranny Fest Collection, and similarly marginalized collections.