Emily Kugler

"Hidden Archives" is a collaborative project between the University of California, Santa Barbara, California State University-Northridge, and Howard University that digitizes and researches a collection of abolitionist materials held at UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections, while also introducing underrepresented students to archival research and the digital humanities. The Ballitore Collection contains 18th- and 19th-century Quaker documents that shed light on the intersection of gender, race, class, and religion during the period. The project uses computational techniques to expose the collection’s contents and exclusions, highlighting how women and people of color are represented within a community that claims egalitarianism. By digitizing and computationally analyzing the collection with a diverse research team, we make it available for scholars, students, and the public while shaping a new generation of researchers attuned to questions of power and absence in archives, digital methodologies, and search engines.