Project

Decriminalize Survival: An Archive of Activism

Program

ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grants

Department

English & Philosophy and Africana Studies

Abstract

Decriminalize Survival is a community-engaged, digital archive project designed to illuminate a submerged legacy of feminist resistance to interpersonal and carceral state violence. Through a variety of traditional and digital humanities methods, the archive provides a searchable database of past and present activist formations, an oral history project, and a gallery space for rotating exhibits. Decriminalize Survival argues for a rich tradition of antiracist feminist and queer activism against the carceral state as it brings together past and present efforts to decarcerate survivors of gender violence; resist gendered prison expansion; confront the reproductive violence of incarceration; and create transformative responses to rape and abuse.