Project

Archivo vivo! An Ethnography of the Archive: Latin American Sex and Gender Community Archives

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships

Department

Feminist Studies

Abstract

In recent years, Latin America has witnessed a significant rise in queer and LGBT+ community-based archives. These initiatives extend beyond mere historical preservation; they assert data sovereignty and challenge narrative control, thus contesting dominant historical methods and narratives. Within this context, this project establishes a hemispheric genealogy of these emerging archives, countering an ongoing archival genealogy centered in the global North. Drawing upon long-term involvement with Acervo Bajubá (Brazil), this research frames these archives not as research objects, but alternatively as methodologies and epistemologies to be understood and replicated. This perspective decentralizes disciplinary constraints and moves away from conventional historical approaches. Through collaborative research with Archivo de la Memoria Trans (Argentina), La Nueva Coccinelle (Ecuador), and Acervo Bajubá (Brazil), the project immerses itself in their unique ways of producing memory/history to analyze and craft narratives about subjectivities and experiences marked both by race and sex/gender dissidences, employing multiple audiovisual strategies.