Temporality in cosmopolitan solidarity: Archival activism and participatory documentary film as mediated witnessing of suffering at Europe’s borders

This article develops and extends the idea of cosmopolitan solidarity to temporality through a case study of archival activism and participatory film-making. It examines mediated witnessing within the Italian online audiovisual archive Archivio delle memorie migranti, which documents and archives the experiences of contemporary migrants in Italy. The moral basis of Archivio delle memorie migranti is cosmopolitan solidarity, which is usually understood as a practice that crosses spatial and communal boundaries. However, the ethics of solidarity also bridges past, present and future generations. Through the case of Archivio delle memorie migranti, this article demonstrates the significance of temporality in the theorization of cosmopolitan solidarity.

Archival Activism and Social Justice: Spotlight on Americana 2016: A Report

In March of 2016, the Student Archivists at Maryland (SAM) brought together archives professionals as part of Americana, their annual symposium at the University of Maryland. Americana 2016 “Archival Activism and Social Justice” focused on the intersection of archives and social justice, a topic of increasing importance and debate both in the archival field and in current events. Three speakers related their experiences documenting the experiences of displaced communities and social justice movements. Katharina Hering, Project Archivist for the National Equal Justice Library at the Georgetown Law Library related her work documenting the history of legal aid, indigene defense and the history of poverty. Diane Travis, a doctoral student at the iSchool explained her project at the University of Maryland’s Digital Curation and Innovation Center reuniting the records of Japanese Americans who were interred at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II. The final speaker, Denise D. Meringolo, is Director of Public History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the creator of the Preserve the Baltimore Uprising Project.