Developing an undergraduate information studies curriculum in support of social justice

Through a review of the current state of Library and Information Studies (LIS) undergraduate education and the orientation of sample programs at consortium member iSchools, this article proposes an alternative pedagogical model that foregrounds the integration of a critical, social justice framework into undergraduate curricula. Based on an initial study conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by the authors and other participants of the Winter/Spring 2015 Teacher Training Seminar, this essay, in addition to positing an approach towards the building of critically engaged undergraduate curriculum, moreover highlights the increasing need and support for LIS students and professionals that have a nuanced information praxis. Inspired by UCLA’s own commitment to a social justice orientation, the authors also point towards existing advocacy for social justice in LIS undergraduate education in the field and professional literature. In turn, underscoring the broader movement for a critical education and practice within LIS

Revisiting a Feminist Ethics of Care in Archives: An Introductory Note

In this featured commentary, Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor revisit their article, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives”* and update its insights to reflect care work in our present time of crisis. Pre-print first published online 06/11/2021   *Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives,” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43

Inscribing Gender: A Duoethnographic Examination of Gendered Values and Practices in Fitness Tracker Design

Using fitness trackers to generate and collect quantifiable data is a widespread practice aimed at better understanding one’s health and body. The intentional design of fitness trackers as genderless or universal is predicated on masculinist design values and assumptions and does not result in “neutral” artifacts. Instead, ignoring gender in the design of fitness tracking devices marks a dangerous ongoing inattention to the needs, desires, lives, and life chances of women, as well as transgender and gender non-conforming persons. We utilize duoethnography, a methodology emphasizing personal narrative and dialogue, as a tool that promotes feminist reflexivity in the design and study of fitness tracking technologies. Using the Jawbone UP3 as our object of study, we present findings that illustrate the gendered physical and interface design features and discuss how these features reproduce narrow understandings of gender, health, and lived experiences

Aligning bodies: Collecting, arranging, and describing hatred for a critical queer archives

This conceptual paper frames hatred as an organizing principle—a central premise from which other materials by proximity derive classification, arrangement, and value—of LGBTQ archives and collections. Recognizing hatred as such points to the need to build queer and critical archives, and to develop archival practices that reflect the experiences and desires and meet the needs of LGBTQ individuals and communities. Examining the arrangement and description of hate mail and messages, archival collecting around hate crimes, and documenting and describing queer and trans self-hatred demonstrates that hatred is a useful lens for examining and deconstructing normative power and its affective circulations and structures. Naming hatred as an organizing principle is key to developing new queer and critical ways of thinking about how to be ethically and politically engaged on behalf of queer and other marginalized knowledge-formations and communities, and new ways of acting on those concepts in archival practice

Critical Feminism in the Archives

Through the use of feminist historiography this article examines some of the myriad ways in which feminist praxis has pushed against, challenged, enriched, dismantled, assimilated or otherwise affected archival theory and practice. We contend that archival theory and practice have yet to fully engage with a feminist praxis that is aimed at more than attaining better representation of women in archives. We begin this piece by tracing the ways in which archives became embedded in feminist social movements and can be understood as critical tools and modes of self-representation and self-historicization. In the second section, we consider the explicit presence of feminist theory in archival studies literature and contemporary practice, the key focal points and arguments that have challenged traditional understandings of archival work around gender. We then address, in the third section, the expansive figure of the archives in humanities and social science literature. This piece contributes significantly to thinking on the ways in which these conversations in the archival turn can, at their best, expose blind spots within the archival literature and provide us with theoretical tools to tackle what we take for granted. Finally, we offer ways in which we see critical and intersectional feminist theory can contribute to existing archival discourse and practice, critiquing concepts that have remained unquestioned such as community and organization. This piece exposes the transformational potential of feminism for archives and of archives for dismantling the heteronormative, capitalist and racist patriarchy

Towards an Archival Critique: Opening Possibilities for Addressing Neoliberalism in the Archival Field

Neoliberalism, as economic doctrine, as political practice, and even as a "governing rationality" of contemporary life and work, has been encroaching on the library and information studies (LIS) field for decades. The shift towards a conscious grappling with social justice and human rights debates and concerns in archival studies scholarship and practice since the 1990s opens the possibility for addressing neoliberalism and its elusive presence. Despite its far-reaching influence, neoliberalism has yet to be substantively addressed in archival discourse. In this article, we propose a set of questions for archival practitioners and scholars to reflect on and consider through their own hands-on practices, research, and productions with records, records creators, and distinct archival communities in order to develop an ongoing archival critique. The goal of this critique is to move towards "an ethical practice of community, as an important mode of participation." This article marks a starting point for critically engaging the archival studies discipline along with the LIS field more broadly by interrogating the discursive and material evidences and implications of neoliberalism

Evidences, Implications, and Critical Interrogations of Neoliberalism in Information Studies: An Introduction

Guest editors Jamie A. Lee and Marika Cifor introduce the issue on Evidences, Implications, and Critical Interrogations of Neoliberalism in Information Studies