These Ghostly Archives

The authors discuss Sylvia Plath archival discoveries in unique ways, unearthing previously unknown materials and bringing new context to well-known worksNew essays on the sociological notion of ‘haunting’ in the archiveInnovative approaches to distance/international collaboration in archival scholarshipIntroduces new ways of understanding Sylvia PlathPlath’s The Bell Jar is to be released in 2018 as a major film starring Dakota Fanning and directed by Kirsten Dunst These Ghostly Archives: The Unearthing of Sylvia Plath offers a ground-breaking look at Plath studies. Focusing on previously unpublished material found in archives from around the world, These Ghostly Archives aims to reconstruct the ghostly figure of Plath within our culture via unseen letters, manuscripts, photographs, places and poems. This book approaches archival studies exploring both the practical and experiential work carried out in the archive, highlighting the ‘detective’-type work that it involves and the traces left behind from history. However, for the first time, this work also combines the sociological notion of ‘haunting’ - that is, the archive as a location where researchers haunt the research subject and in turn are haunted by the traces left behind. Never is material culture more powerful than when associated with the dead; never is the archive ghostlier when haunted by the absent presence of Plath. This book showcases the necessity to leave no archival box or folder left unopened, and how the researcher and the archive can change even though its documents might stay the same. Illustrations: 32 colour photographs

Ghosts of Archive draws on the discourses of deconstruction, intersectionality and archetypal psychology to mount an argument that archive is fundamentally and structurally spectral and that the work of archive is justice. Drawing on more than 20 years of the author’s research on deconstruction and archive, the book posits archive as an essential resource for social justice activism and as a source, or location, of soul for individuals and communities. Through explorations of what Jacques Derrida termed ‘hauntology’, Harris invites a listening to the call for justice in conceptual spaces that are non-disciplinary. He argues that archive is both constructed in relation to and beset by ghosts – ghosts of the living, of the dead and of those not yet born – and that attention should be paid to them. Establishing a unique nexus between a deconstructive intersectionality and traditions of ‘memory for justice’ in struggles against oppression from South Africa and elsewhere, the book makes a case for a deconstructive praxis in today’s archive. Offering new ideas about spectrality, banditry and archival activism, Ghosts of Archive should appeal to those working in the disciplines of archival science, information studies and psychology. It should also be essential reading for those with an interest in social justice issues, transitional justice, history, philosophy, memory studies and postcolonial studies.

Essays exploring the importance of archives as artifacts of culture

Explores critical and creative responses to the contemporary poetry archiveProvides an innovative new dialogue between critics and creative writers on the value and practice of the literary archiveExpandes the scope for understanding perspectives on, and the opposition between, creative and critical relations to archival materialsOpens up a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking the archive as both a source for scholarship and a source of inspiration for creative practiceThese 13 newly commissioned chapters examine the impact of archival poetry collections on both literary scholarship and poetic practice. They examine what we can learn from the drafts, notebooks and personal libraries left behind by poets and look at the ways in which the growth of poetry archives has changed the way poets think about their work. The contributing poets and scholars - including Susan Howe, Sean O'Brien and George Szirtes - present an in-depth account of the significance of poetry archives for contemporary literature. The collection provides a new cross-disciplinary agenda for thinking about the archive as both a source for scholarship and inspiration for creative practice.

Ideology in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath provides close readings of some of Plath’s transitional and late poetry that deals with the domestic and cultural ideologies prevalent in post-war America, which affected women’s lives at the time. By examining some of Plath’s manuscripts, Ikram Hili shows how these ideologies informed her writing process.

Contributions by Kathleen Alcalá, Sarah Amira de la Garza, Sarah De Los Santos Upton, Moises Gonzales, Luisa Fernanda Grijalva-Maza, Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, Spencer R. Herrera, Brenda Selena Lara, Susana Loza, Juan Pacheco Marcial, Amanda R. Martinez, Diana Isabel Martínez, Shantel Martinez, Diego Medina, Kelly Medina-López, Cathryn J. Merla-Watson, Arturo “Velaz” Muñoz, Eric Murillo, Saul Ramirez, Roxanna Ivonne Sanchez-Avila, ire’ne lara silva, Lizzeth Tecuatl Cuaxiloa, and Bianca Tonantzin Zamora Monsters and Saints: LatIndigenous Landscapes and Spectral Storytelling is a collection of stories, poetry, art, and essays divining the contemporary intersection of Latinx and Indigenous cultures from the American Southwest, Mexico, and Central and South America. To give voice to this complicated identity, this volume investigates how cultures of ghost storytelling foreground a sense of belonging and home in people from LatIndigenous landscapes. Monsters and Saints reflects intersectional and intergenerational understandings of lived experiences, bodies, and traumas as narrated through embodied hauntings. Contributions to this anthology represent a commitment to thoughtful inquiry into the ways storytelling assigns meaning through labels like monster, saint, and ghost, particularly as these unfold in the context of global migration. For many marginalized and displaced peoples, a sense of belonging is always haunted through historical exclusion from an original homespace. This exclusion further manifests as limited bodily autonomy. By locating the concept of “home” as beyond physical constructs, the volume argues that spectral stories and storytelling practices of LatIndigeneity (re)configure affective states and spaces of being, becoming, migrating, displacing, and belonging.

With chapters written by more than 25 leading and emerging international scholars, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Sylvia Plath provides the most comprehensive collection of contemporary scholarship on Plath's work. Including new scholarly perspectives from feminist and gender studies, critical race studies, medical humanities and disability studies, this collection explores: · Plath's literary contexts – from the Classics and the long poem to W.B Yeats, Edith Sitwell, Ruth Sillitoe, Carol Ann Duffy, and Ted Hughes · New insights from Plath's previously unpublished letters and writings · Plath's broadcasting work for the BBC Providing new approaches to her life and work, this book is an indispensable volume for scholars of Sylvia Plath.

Roughly 1.7 million people died in Cambodia from untreated disease, starvation, and execution during the Khmer Rouge reign of less than four years in the late 1970s. The regime’s brutality has come to be symbolized by the multitude of black-and-white mug shots of prisoners taken at the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of “enemies of the state” were tortured before being sent to the Killing Fields. In Archiving the Unspeakable, Michelle Caswell traces the social life of these photographic records through the lens of archival studies and elucidates how, paradoxically, they have become agents of silence and witnessing, human rights and injustice as they are deployed at various moments in time and space. From their creation as Khmer Rouge administrative records to their transformation beginning in 1979 into museum displays, archival collections, and databases, the mug shots are key components in an ongoing drama of unimaginable human suffering. Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award, Society of American Archivists Longlist, ICAS Book Prize, International Convention of Asia Scholars