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F20 Black Atlantic: Resources, Pedagogy, and Scholarship on the 18th Century Black AtlanticMain MenuAuthor IndexFAQWeek 01: August 28: PedagogiesWeek 02: Friday, September 4: Thinking about Projects and Digital MethodsWeek 03: Friday, September 11: Black Atlantic Classics Week 04: Reccomended: Thursday September 17: 4pm: Indigenous Studies and British LiteraturesThe Center for Literary + Comparative Studies @UMDWeek 04: Required: Friday, September 18: Reading: Indigenous Studies in the Eighteenth CenturyWeek 04: Required: Friday, September 18: Book LaunchRemaking the Republic: Black Politics and the Creation of American CitizenshipWeek 05: Friday, September 25: Digital Humanities, Caribbean Stuides, and FashionGuest: Siobhan MeiWeek 06: Friday, October 2: OBIWeek 07: October 9: Black LondonSancho's Social NetworksWeek 08: Friday, October 16:Muslim Slave Narratives, Hans Sloane, the British Museum, Colonialism as CurationWeek 09: Friday, October 23: Reflection and Tools DayWeek 10: Friday, October 30: Myths of a White Atlantic (and Project Proposal)Week 11: Friday, November 6: Black New EnglandWeek 12: Friday, November 13: Woman of Colour and Mary PrinceWeek 13: Friday, November 20: Peer Review Workshop and Draft with Action PlanKierra M. Porter6b7d2e75a0006cdf2df0ac2471be73ef9c88c9e3Brandice Walker579eedcc76564f61b1ba7f36082d05bdf4fc3435Alexis Harper52f175308474d58b269191120b6cda0582dcde71Catherine C. Saunders80964fcb3df3a95f164eca6637e796a22deb5f63Joseph Heidenescher83b7b4309ef73ce872fc35c61eb8ed716cce705fJoshua Lawson8aecdcf9d2db74d75fb55413d44f3c2dfc3828bdKymberli M Corprue7f6419242e66e656367985fbc1cfa10a933ce71dJimisha Relerford1903b0530d962a83c3a72bad80c867df4f5c027fEmily MN Kugler98290aa17be4166538e04751b7eb57a9fe5c26a2Reed Caswell Aikendbd321f67398d85b0079cc751762466dfe764f88Brenton Brock619582e4449ba6f0c631f2ebb7d7313c0890fa00
Questions about Archiving: Haitian History
12020-10-08T19:35:27-07:00Alexis Harper52f175308474d58b269191120b6cda0582dcde71377914Week Five Response - Alexis Harperplain2020-11-13T14:33:53-08:00Alexis Harper52f175308474d58b269191120b6cda0582dcde71Siobhan Mei's Feminist Translation Matters: Reading Fashion Materiality and Revolution in the English Language Translations of Marie Chauvet's La Danse sur volcan" details the many ways Haitian women resisted materially in the pre-revolutionary period in Haiti. Marie Chauvet's Dance on the Volcano chronicles the life of a free woman of color who is assimilated onto the stage because of her gifted singing ability. Her positionality is fraught because although she is free, she is still victim to the caste system of Haiti that divides the enslaves from the free people of color from the various classes of white French people. One of the persistent themes through the text is the ways women specifically resisted through materiality and consumption around sumptuary laws. The women in Dance on the Volcano wore elaborate headscarfs, jewels on their feet and other body adornments to ironically comment on the laws that required they cover their hair or go barefoot.
This form of resistance is interesting to me, but I also wonder where it falls short - especially when it comes to the archive. The fashion is a bodily performance and it consists of the material. Materials, as they are conceptualized by Chauvet, are a discourse of power. However, in the novel, it is quite tenuous because the power discourse over clothes or materiality is constantly being battled by a group that is perpetually underclassed. It is a temporary resistance - but a resistance none-the-less.
From this thought, I was led to think about archiving, documenting and otherwise collecting fashion and had a few questions:
How do scholars, archivists, etc ensure that their collection of resistance fashion is contextualized. Of course, it can't just be a gallery, it has to paired with certain works and contextualization.