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By the People, For the People, With the People:

Public History Practices and Minority Home Movie Archiving in the United States

Master Thesis Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image

Final Draft 23 June 2020 Department of Media Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Amsterdam Hadley Kluber (11759674) Supervisor: dr. C.J. Birdsall Second Reader: prof. dr. J.J. Noordegraaf


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Table of Contents

Introduction………1

Chapter 1. Developments in Historiographic Practices……….6

Section 1.1. History from Below: Shifting Historiography……….……..6

Section 1.2. Public History’s Inclusive Practices.………..9

Section 1.3. Sharing Authority: Engaging with Communities.………12

Chapter 2. Home Movie Archiving in the United States……….16

Section 2.1. Changing Archival Regards Towards Home Movies.………..16

Section 2.2. Minority Home Movies as Historical Narratives……….21

Chapter 3. Case Studies………..24

Section 3.1. South Side Home Movie Project at the University of Chicago………..24

Section 3.1.1. Collection Practices……….24

Section 3.1.2. Documentation Practices……….27

Section 3.1.3. Presentation Practices………..………30

Section 3.2. Memories to Light at the Center for Asian American Media……….31

Section 3.2.1. Collection Practices……….32

Section 3.2.2. Documentation Practices……….33

Section 3.2.3. Presentation Practices……….38

Section 3.3. Great Migration Home Movie Project at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian Institute………40

Section 3.3.1. Presentation Practices……….40

Section 3.3.2. Documentation Practices………44

Section 3.3.3. Presentation Practices……….50

Section 3.4. Results………52

Conclusion.………..55

Work Cited..……….57

Appendix I..……….67

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Introduction

For several generations, a gap existed between museum collections and professional historians. Early historians concentrated largely on politics, war, and economics, using written primary sources, mostly created by elites who had the time and resources to create this documentary record. With the rise of social history in the 1960s, historians began to uncover the stories of women and non-elites whose lives had to be explored by other means because they did not usually leave as rich a documentary record as the wealthy men did.

Cherstin Lyon, Elizabeth Nix & Rebecca Shrum (99) As first-person documentation of history and culture, home movies provoke examination of issues of identity, culture, history, politics, and memory from the point of view of images made outside the dominant channels of representation. Home movies are always gendered and racialized. Sometimes referred to as ‘auto-ethnographies,’ home movies position history as memory generated from the point of view of participants.

Karen Ishizuka & Patricia Zimmerman (20)

While working on the present thesis, I have found that when there is a mention of “home movies”, no two people share the same definition and indeed many different definitions are in circulation. In the

mainstream U.S. context, home movies, by definition, are generally movies made in the location of the home by the owner of the camera, and typically documenting family or, more broadly, domestic life. For archivists and academics, too, the definition of home movies varies as well and have varied over time. Due to the varied understandings of home movies, for the purpose of this thesis a broad definition is used: “Home Movies are unique cultural documents recorded on amateur motion picture film (generally on 16mm, 8mm, or Super 8mm and a few esoteric gauges.)” (History & Significance of 8mm/16mm Film). Fittingly enough, this definition has been drawn from the Center for Asian American Media, which is one of the case studies studied by this thesis.

Following the conventional narrative, 16mm home movies originated in the United States from 1921, and were marketed to middle-class white families (Citron 5). The popularity of home movie making increased in 1932 with the introduction of the cost effective alternative 8mm film stock,

becoming half the frame size and costing half the price of 16mm film (Citron 7). Shooting on small gauge film stock became even more popular in 1965 with the introduction of Super8 film which allowed for a larger image and more consumer friendly, technically accessible medium (Citron 7). Due to improved affordability, film cameras were accessed by an increasingly larger number of Americans and, in turn, home movies began to unofficially and sometimes unintentionally document the day-to-day life of various minority communities across the country.

However, what much of the scholarly literature has failed to acknowledge thus far, is that from the earliest period of home movies, in the 1920s onwards, such equipment was acquired and used by a wide diversity of Americans as evidenced by the archival collections of films held at various institutional

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locations across the U.S. Although marketing for home movie production began in the 1920s, home movies arrival into the archival consciousness took place in the 1990s. In their landmark text, Mining the

Home Movie, Karen Ishizuka and Patricia Zimmerman are the first to chart the progression of home

movies from personal to professional collections in the United States. Ishizuka and Zimmerman note that the turning point for the interest, awareness and eventual collection of home movies happened by 1993 when the United States government held hearings to “assess the state of film preservation, access, and archives” (11). At these hearings, both regional and national archives came together to testify to the fact that Hollywood’s feature film preservation was being prioritized over amateur and home movies (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11).

Beginning in the 1920s “the relationship established between the federal government and

Hollywood representatives helped promulgate the centrality of Hollywood entertainment features in early national film preservation, discourse, policy, and action” (Frick 21). And until the 1990s, the broader archival community in the United States was primarily focused on the preservation and restoration of feature films; mainstream films continued to dominate their collections (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 13). During the 1993 hearings, testimonies were given by archives at the forefront of amateur film collection; Northeast Historic Film in Maine, the Prelinger Archives, Human Studies Film Archives at the

Smithsonian Institution, and the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11). These institutions recognized that Hollywood features constituted only “one layer of our national visual culture legacy” and “emphasized that amateur film and home movies were often the only cinematic materials documenting and tracing regional history and minority voices” (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11). With a desire for a more diverse film history, the testimonies from these institutions helped pave the way for amateur films - and with them, home movies - to become a part of collections and deemed worthy of preservation.

The Congressional hearings further accelerated home movies transition from the living rooms of Americans to countless institutions, collections, organizations and annual events, such as Home Movie Day. Started in 2002, this annual grassroots event focuses “on the screening and collecting of amateur films from regional communities” and “highlight(s) the need for home movie preservation and archiving, and also serve(s) to create public awareness about amateur films as part of the record of 20th century visual culture” (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 15-16). To this day, Home Movie Day has taken place not only in the United States but in at least 35 different countries (Home Movie Locations). The global reach of this event demonstrates the importance of home movies for audiences in both popular and academic settings and is also increasingly reflected in mainstream AV archives’ collections and practices, which mirror the growing interest in home movies and other non-canonical formats. 1

I have experience at Eye Filmmuseum working with the non-canonical works of Peter Rubin

(https://www.eyefilm.nl/peter-1

rubin-collection-blog-2-super8-films). While at Eye, the recent documentary film Ze noemen me baboe (2019) or They call me

babu, was produced with home movies from the Eye Collections with assistance from Eye curator, Dorrette Schuutmayer (https://

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This thesis responds to this gap in the literature and claims that home movie collections from non-white American families or, what I term, ‘minority home movies’ have the potential to become sources of non-traditional narratives. Minority home movies, in this thesis, refers to home movies that have been created by a member of a racial minority group in the United States. Minority home movies, as noted by Blake McDowell in our interview, promote self-representation, “especially for African Americans who have a long history of being portrayed negatively in mainstream media and to be able to pull these images of self-representation and empowerment and doing normal things and save them and present them as sort of a counter-narrative to the large swaths of the media of the twentieth century is highly

important” (Castro, Jasmyn & Blake McDowell. Interview. 30 April 2018). There are a number of existing archives, initiatives and collections in the United States devoted specifically to minority home movie collections. In the context of this thesis, the term minority references a racial minority group; while the case studies examined in this thesis focus on two specific racial minority communities, African Americans and Asian Americans, respectively, it is essential to acknowledge the other minority

populations within the United States; the LGBTQIA+ community, religious minorities, disabled persons, political, regional minorities and others. 2

The key theoretical lens introduced in this thesis as a way to understand stakeholders’ roles in historical narratives is drawn from the field of public history. As public historian Thomas Cauvin defines “the objective [of public history] is not to adapt the past to present issues, but to provide more complex representations by giving voice to under-represented aspects and actors of the past. This creates richer interpretations of the past as well as empowers underrepresented groups in the present” (Public History 231). These methodologies are practical ways in which minority home movie collections can become sources of non-traditional narratives while allowing the community represented on film to be included in archival acts of collection, documentation and presentation. At present, there are not many explicit overlaps between the field of public history and home movie collections, however, public history offers a set of practices that activate non-traditional narratives while engaging with minority communities. I argue the engagement of minority communities is particularly important because, as previously mentioned, non-traditional narratives have a limited presence in the conventional historical narrative and it is critical that those communities are able to have a say in how their historical narratives are collected, documented and preserved, rather than having it written for them, as has historically been the case.

Accordingly, this thesis poses and engages with two main sets of questions. The first pertain to theoretical and applied insights derived from public history: How have historiographic practices

developed over time? What is the traditional historical narrative, who benefitted from this narrative? Why and to what extent does this need to change? How can non-traditional narratives be created through public histories inclusive practices? Why are inclusive practices and community engagement crucial to

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non-traditional narratives? The second set of core research questions in this thesis are concerned with the application of these insights for the case of home movies collections: What are the past and current considerations of home movies in archives in the United States? Can home movies, made by minority communities or ‘minority home movies’ be considered a source for non-traditional narratives? How are institutions collecting, documenting and presenting minority home movie collections? To what extent are these institutions engaging with their respective minority communities, and, to any extent, engaging with public history?

To answer these core questions, first, in Chapter 1, developments in historiographical practices are traced, demonstrating the traditional, dominant historical narratives which traditionally privileged white, upper-class, elite narratives have come into question. Movements like “history from below” point to the importance of non-traditional narratives which have, in favor of the traditional narratives, been erased, neglected or misrepresentative to those non-white Americans. The history from below movement and others call for this shift in historiographic practices, seeking new methodologies for collection and new sources of narratives to create non-traditional narratives. The field of public history is introduced along with the inclusive practices of sharing authority, which offer methodologies to combat traditional historical narratives.

Chapter 2 charts the results that shifts in historiography have had on the archival field, focusing on the archival treatment of home movies and how this has changed since home movie filmmaking began. As identified by Ishizuka and Zimmerman, the turning point for the consideration for home movies and amateur works took place in 1993 during Congressional hearings to discuss the state of film preservation in the United States. From this point onwards, home movie-related collections, events, and publications have continued to increase. The second section in the chapter explores the ways in which minority home movie collections can offer historical narratives that offer alternatives to the traditional historical

narrative. Archival theory now critically reflects on the social and political power inherent in archives; archives themselves are not passive agents, but rather active in facilitating the creation of historical narratives. To ensure the historical narratives do not remain traditional, exclusionary narratives, it is my contention that the new archival sources or stakeholders discussed here must be engaged with archivists and their practices through a principle of “shared authority”, a concept introduced in further detail below.

Chapter 3 focuses on a corpus of three selected case studies, which have been primarily

researched through online and desk research, and, when possible, on-site visits and in-depth interviews. 3

The research focuses on these institutions’ practices of collection, documentation, and presentation. While following this analytical framework, the study of each case study will include note of how these practices

It is relevant and important to note that for the case studies this thesis is concerned with, the head of these institutions and, in 3

some cases, the archivists working with the collections are members of the racial minority communities reflected in the home movies in their collections.

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engage with the institutions’ respective minority community. The analysis will conclude with a discussion of my results, and leads to a proposed framework utilizing models drawn from public history.

In the Conclusion, I draw and build on methods proposed by public history to create a framework for institutions working with minority home movie collections. This proposed framework acknowledges the ways in which inclusive practices and community engagement are already taking place. Yet it also offers an opportunity to demonstrate how the framework can be beneficial, risky, or sustained for both the institutions and the respective racial minority communities involved.


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Chapter 1. Developments in Historiographical Practices

The objective [of public history] is not to adapt the past to present issues, but to provide more complex representations by giving voice to underrepresented aspects and actors of the past. This creates richer interpretations of the past as well as empowers

underrepresented groups in the present.

Thomas Cauvin

Public History: A Textbook of Practice (231)

The home movies give us information that is not centralized, not government

propaganda, and not made for hire. Home movies provide the culture with a deeper and different record than moving images made professionally. Home movies hold clips of life over the last 70 years, things that are passionately interesting and of importance to individuals. The uniqueness and point-of-view motion pictures from the past makes it imperative that more such records be made, be shared, and be preserved for future generations.

History & Significance of 8mm/16mm Film,

Center for Asian American Media website 1.1. History from Below: Shifting Historiography 


When discussing the traditional historical narrative, this thesis is referencing the authors and narratives of “traditional history.” In the scholarly literature, such narratives have sometimes been referred to as those focused on “great” men of history, and crafting “dominant" or “master” historical narratives (Carlyle 21; Blevins, Salinas 36; Au, Brown 358). According to historian Krijn Thijs, traditional historical narratives are problematic as these narratives aid in our understanding of history yet are exclusionary to many so-called non-traditional historical narratives: “In its everyday usage, [the concept of master narrative] means ‘the big story’ told by the dominant group in a given society… By interpreting the world and its history, master narratives convey social power” (60). As this quote indicates, the traditional style of history writing often gave the appearance of being neutral, unbiased and objective. Yet traditional historical narratives can be characterized by biases, erasures, and a narrow view of what is historically-accurate and relevant, particularly to those in racial, gendered, political, and economic situations different from the dominant majority population. In the context of the United States, critical race theorist Barbara J. Love has drawn attention to how the “commonly-accepted history” of the United States focuses on “the description of events as told by members of dominant/majority groups, accompanied by the values and beliefs that justify the actions taken by dominants to insure their dominant position” (228-229). As such, traditional history, as it is understood in this thesis, represents a singular narrative of history which is documented by and about members of dominant society groups of race, gender, social status, etc. As such, it tends to ignore authors from minority communities and has the potential to either misconstrue or completely ignores minority communities’ own historical narratives.

To combat the erasures generated by traditional historical narratives, there have long been insistent calls to diversify historical narratives with attention paid to those who have been underserved by

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the elitist traditional historical narrative. One of the most influential contributions to this debate was the 1963 book The Making of the English Working Class by Marxist historian E.P. Thompson. Thompson’s book focused on social history and asserted the importance of working-class history “from the bottom up”, prioritizing the experiences of “ordinary people” and “everyday life.” Developments emerge from this seminal work across many disciplines which have commonly referred to as micro-history, (the) people’s history, popular history, history of everyday life, history from the bottom-up, however for the purposes of this thesis I will opt for the term history from below as an encompassing term for all

movements which challenge traditional historical narratives and focus on elevating the narratives of those who have experienced non-traditional histories. History from below, and the other associated terms, indicate shifting interest in historical perspective; from elite, traditional history writers and histories, to non-elite or “everyday” historical authors and their history.

While specifically concerned with identifying and recording non-traditional historical narratives, history from below does not attempt replace or change the existing traditional historical narratives. Instead, it calls for supplementation to the traditional historical narrative. The field of public history, which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, has been crucial to this insight. As Thomas Cauvin points out, public history “resulted in new investigation and the creation of new primary sources for

historians” (Public History 8). As a result of this narrative shift, history is no longer understood solely through the lens of the single, traditional narrative but additionally through new primary sources; all authors who hav previously been erased or misrepresented by the traditional narrative. Supplementing non-traditional historical narratives enriches the previously dominated historical record, providing additional context and diverse historical experiences.

Archives, particularly national archives, have themselves contributed to traditional narratives based on the nature of their work. As Stefan Berger has pointed out “the importance of archives in authenticating and legitimating the authority of historical work meant that archives became increasingly important for the professionalization of history writing” (1). Archives, therefore, may have been

instrumental in creating “master narratives” but “archival records are far less important for grand national narratives. Here, perspectivity and interpretive frameworks, which cannot be gained from the actual archives are far more important” (17). Still, other commentators recognize the still highly-influential power of the archive, which will be discussed further in Chapter 2.

The influence of history from below on museums and archives has resulted in the field of new history. Similar to history from below, this field has sought to critique the previous methods of

historiography, which was “concentrated largely on politics, war, and economics, using written primary sources, mostly created by elites who had the time and resources to create this documentary

record” (Lyon, Nix and Shrum 99). As such, this field acknowledges traditional historical narratives are elitist and the resultant need for new sources, new stories, and new methodologies to uncover alternative historical narratives. This requires a new understanding of museum stakeholders, defined as “the

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communities or individuals (or, sometimes, their descendants) being represented by an exhibit” (Lyon, Nix and Shrum 103). The potential for engaging stakeholders is an acknowledgement of the need to “embrace their diverse perspectives as an opportunity to make our work more relevant to a greater number of people” (Lyon, Nix and Shrum 104). In line with activating stakeholders, recently there has been a move to try to democratize the museum space. As Cauvin indicates, this involves the effort to “transform museums from repositories to public forums. Museums work not only for, but more and more with their public” (Public History 31). Museums are not the only institutions experiencing the shift, archives too must find new ways to document modern society (Cox 40). By focusing on non-traditional historical narratives, museums and other institutions have the potential make themselves more appealing by representing the histories of the public and by working with those peoples whose histories are being represented.

History from below also had an impact on the study of film and the archival practices devoted to film preservation. Where scholars of cinema history traditionally emphasized works of the “film canon”, comprising a selected corpus of films by directors, the field of new film theory “expanded the range and types of evidence, particularly those considered suppressed or at the margins of official events and practices, as well as promoted new explanatory models of discerning patterns, meanings, and significant within and between disparate events and artifacts” (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 1). The focus shifted from traditional Hollywood films to the rest of the film corpus. As Maltby recognizes, this is demonstrated by the recent scholars who have begun “advocating the development of histories of cinema that place audiences rather than films at their centre and integrate the quantitative methods of social history with the concrete and particular conditions of experience that are the predominant concern of micro-history” (77).

A parallel development to the critical understanding of traditional historiography has been a stress on questions of representation and an acknowledgement of plural voices and understandings of the past. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., in his 1997 book Beyond the Great Story, points to the scholars who argue for self-representation, as it is only in this way “can groups previously hidden or treated as objects become subjects or actors in their own histories” (179). He continues: “the great challenge today of… the multiculturalist ideal is to combine with any given text….multiple viewpoints as well as different voices (I) from within the represented world the past, (2) from outside the represented world of the past in light of subsequent events and ideas, and (3) from the conflicting or at least diverse viewpoints existing in the present” (183). However, these theoretical challenges are well worth it to engage the diverse viewpoints. Indeed, as Cauvin writes, “the presence of multiple voices from community and individual partners is an alternative to unquestioned official histories and helps to empower people, especially under-represented minorities. In turn, multiple voices enhance diversity in historical narratives” (Public History 216).

In light of the theory surrounding these scholarly debates, this thesis is concerned with how the presence of the racial minority communities has the potential to both enhance the historical narratives and empower the community itself. In order for the historical record of the United States to be “enhanced,”

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particular and urgent attention must be paid to those who have been incorrectly represented or completely neglected. The African American and Asian American communities are two of many racial minority groups which have been subject to the historical whitewashing of traditional historical narratives. This thesis focuses, respectively, on both the African American and Asian American communities, as there are a number of current archival projects in the United States concerned with the authors of these

communities and their histories. Discussed in detail in Chapter 3, the case studies examine archival projects with minority home movie collections and community engagement, exemplifying history from below through their focus on new historical authors and narratives. Minority home movies, as I will argue, have the potential, as identified by Center for Asian American Media in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, to provide valuable information which is an alternative to the traditional history. In Chapter 3, I will show how the engagement of the community, or working with new historical authors, is crucial to the minority home movie collections’ ability to become new historical narratives.

Moreover, such attention to the inclusion of film heritage related to African American, Asian American and other minority groups is critical for the future of archives and museum spaces. Not only does the focus on non-traditional historical narratives “make representations of the past less elitist and celebratory”, but also “the publicness of everyday life history makes it more attractive for people” (Public

History 98). In this resulting historiographic shift, it is important to focus not only on the new historical

narratives potentially provided by racial minority communities but also to focus on new historical authors and new methodologies as well.

In the context of museums and archives, minority communities can be seen as new historical authors as well as stakeholders. To ensure the inclusion of community members whose voices have been ignored historically are represented, the question of audience engagement is key. A key principle for facilitating the inclusion of racial minority communities in new historical narratives is a commitment to engage them in an institution’s decisions regarding their representation. This understanding is in line with current movement towards the democratization of museum spaces as well as this increased interest in new historical narratives. As such, the following sections will focus more on the importance of institutions engaging with minority communities and propose models for engagement offered by the field of public history. The practice of public history offers models like “shared authority”, introduced by oral and public historian Michael Frisch in 1990, intended to provide institutions who engage with historical narratives new ways to engage with the minority communities represented therein.

1.2. Public History’s Inclusive Practices

The practice of public history is found both in and outside of the academic sphere and can be found across various fields, and as such, it can often be difficult to define. As writer and historian Jill Liddington notes, this could be due to the fact that the term is used in a variety of ways by a variety of practitioners in a variety of places (84). The quote at the beginning of this section offers us “objectives” which are

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commonalities shared between those participating, in any capacity, in public history. To summarize these objectives: public history strives to provide a complex retelling of the historical narrative achieved by focusing on non-traditional narratives which, in-turn, empowers the respective minority communities. I assert an additional commonality across all exercises of public history: public history meets these

objectives through the engagement between institutions and the under-represented groups. In Chapter 3, I will demonstrate that these objectives (and methodologies) of public history are present in locations such as museums and archives.

As has been stated, public history aims to provide a complex retelling of history. However, where other fields of study such as critical race theory seek to rewrite the traditional historical narrative, both history from below and public history attempt to add to the traditional narrative - in effect supplementing the documented historical record with the non-traditional narrative. Frisch states that what may be most compelling about public history is its “capacity to redefine and redistribute intellectual authority, so that this might be shared more broadly… rather than continuing to serve as an instrument of power and hierarchy” (A Shared Authority xx). This non-traditional narrative, alongside the traditional historical narrative, provides an enriched and complex version of history.

Public history, in regards to its origins in the United States, became formalized during the historiographic shift in focus away from traditional historical narratives towards a focus on the non-traditional narratives and authors. Oral and public historian Ronald J. Grele notes in his article Whose

Public? Whose History? What is the Goal of the Public Historian? public history “implies a major

redefinition of the role of the historian. It promises us a society in which a broad public participates in the construction of its own history. The name conjures up images of a new group of historical workers interpreting the past of heretofore ignored classes of people” (48). The birth of the public history movement in the United States took place within the broader context of the reappraisal of the role of historians. Grele states that “the proponents of public history have mounted a sustained and important critique of the ways in which American historians have defined themselves as professionals, of the work they do, of the ways in which they organize professionally, and of the uses to which they have put their professional organizations” (40-41). With traditional historical narratives in question, as were those associated with the creation of the traditional narratives (the authors) as well as their methodologies behind the creation of the narratives. As discussed in 1.1, history from below calls for “non-traditional” methodologies and authors to engage with non-traditional historical narratives, so does public history present new or non-traditional methodologies and roles for historians to accomplish these tasks. The new methodologies will be discussed further in the following section.

As traced by Cauvin in The Rise of Public History: An International Perspective, the resulting need for new roles lead the American public history movement to develop a rapid institutionalization of public history through university programs, a journal and an official institutional body which gave credibility to the movement and created an identity for public historians (11). The formal establishment of

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public history begins in 1976 with the establishment of the first graduate program in public history at the University of California, Santa Barbara which was shortly followed in 1978 by the first edition of the journal The Public Historian (The Rise 11). Several conferences between 1978 and 1980 were organized about public history, contributing to the creation of the National Council on Public History in 1979. Resulting from historiographic change brought on by history from below, the institutionalization of the public history field originated from the desire to train new types of historians to work in new ways with new sources outside of the traditional settings (The Rise 10).

Before the “history from below” movement gained momentum in the late 1960s and before public history was formalized in the late 1970s, there were public historians working in various places

throughout the United States, seeking the public’s history in various ways. These early public historians were largely invisible as they had not defined themselves as “public historians”. This phenomenon, of “pre-formalized” public historians, alludes to the ways in which the ideas of public history and those upholding them, whether or not they call themselves “public historians”, exist in many different locations, with or without formalization. In the introduction to the very first volume of The Public Historian, Wesley Johnson listed the eight sectors in which public historians usually work: Government, Business, Research Organizations, Media, Historical Preservation, Historical Interpretation: Historical Societies and Museums, Archives and Records Management, and Teaching of public history (4-10). As Johnson notes, these varied fields of application “confirms the idea that public history’s opportunities are in the larger public arena” (7). While published in the fall of 1978, the broad diversity of public historians’ application still persists today: public historians operate both within the educational and institutionalized framework of academia yet there remain opportunities for public historians outside of these locations. According to the website for the National Council on Public History, those who practice public history today may “call themselves historical consultants, museum professionals, government historians archivists, oral historians, cultural resource managers, curators, film and media producers, historical interpreters, historic

preservationists, policy advisers, local historians, and community activists, among many other job descriptions” (Who Does Public History?). This development will be further discussed in Chapter 3.

As the result of history from below, so too was the desire to seek out non-traditional historical narratives. Public history, resulting from this historiographic shift, became a formalized and

institutionalized field that seeks to activate non-traditional historical narratives across various fields of practice. According to Cauvin, at its core, public history is the consideration for non-academic sources (Public History 11). Because of the persistence of traditional historical narratives, this process entails a focus on the “non-academic”, on new historical authors, narratives, and methodologies. Public historians, present in both archives and museums, engage with these sources and offer inclusive models for

institutions to work with their communities and to create non-traditional historical narratives together. As minority communities are recognized as narratives in need of preservation, museums and archival collections are focusing on centering collections around these communities as well as engaging with the

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communities. The next section will focus on the inclusive practices offered by public history, further discussing why inclusive models and community engagement are crucial to non-traditional narratives.
 1.3. Sharing Authority: Engaging with Communities

Shared authority is essential. Historians and political actors should not speak in place of native populations.

Thomas Cauvin (2016, 233) As the above quote states, encounters with the public are essential to public history, but why and how does public history engage? One of the main reasons why public historians engage with communities is because they recognize them as a vital source of history. Public historians, when documenting

non-traditional narratives, seek the contribution of multiple voices which empowers minority communities and challenges traditional narratives. Public historians also propose practices such as ‘shared authority’ whereby public historians work with communities in every step of the history-writing process. This section demonstrates that viewing the community as a source – by seeking multiple voices and sharing authority between the community and the institution – is essential to the practice of public history and creating non-traditional historical narratives called for by history from below advocates.

Since the 1960s, history from below has helped in changing historiography. This is evident in the shifts from traditional historical narratives to non-traditional ones, from traditional historian to public author, and from the public having their history narrated for them to being invited to tell their history themselves. The field of public history is adept at working with the public as sources or “new authors” of non-traditional narratives. As Thomas Cauvin points out “public historians dealing with the national past should strive to engage audiences, to challenge stereotypes, and to explain the complexities of the past.' (The Rise 22). Public historians should, especially in cases related to erasures or misrepresentations in the traditional historical record, engage those audiences to challenge traditional narratives. This engagement challenges stereotypes and can contextualize complexities of traditional historical narratives.

If public historians should work with their publics, then to what extent should this be done? I propose that since public historians’ work is inextricably tied with the public, their community

engagement should not remained restricted. Rather, in response to the re-examination of traditional ways in which history was written, engagement with the communities involved should be promoted at every turn, from collection through to presentation. As Cauvin explains, “the presence of multiple voices from community and individual partners is an alternative to unquestioned official histories and helps empower people, especially under-represented minorities. In turn, multiple voices enhance diversity in historical narratives” (Public History 216). When supplementing the long-held traditional historical narrative, offering non-traditional narratives, however many, is a method of combatting those damaging historical narratives and empowering communities in need of representation they have a say in.

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Seeking multiple voices from the community results in additional contextual information at various points in the history-making process; this addresses biases in content while creating richer sources of history. When discussing representation of native populations “it is important that museums,

exhibitions, documentaries, and archives should not just be about native populations but also produced with them” (Public History 233). While representation of those who have been historically disadvantaged by traditional historical narratives is important, archivists or historians cannot tell their stories for them; this would risk, in effect, the creation of traditional historical narratives. Instead, public historians should ideally engage the public in the archival process, in order to improve their authority over their own narrative.

To ensure that non-traditional narratives are told by minority communities, institutions in possession of these narratives should consider working towards “shared authority,” a principle important to the work of public historians. As illustrated in Introduction to Public History: Interpreting the Past,

Engaging Audience edited by Cherstin Lyon, Elizabeth Nix and Rebecca Shrum, “shared authority is

inherent in the work of… public history because public historians are not the sole interpreters” (10). Here, the women behind this edition point to public historians’ goals of giving voice to under-represented actors of the past while recognizing the actors cannot be separated from their narratives - the under-represented actors (as well as stakeholders) will interpret their narratives alongside historians.

Popularized by Michael Frisch in his book Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of

Oral and Public History, written in the late 1980s, the concept of “shared authority comes from the

conviction that historians do not own history, but that is rather a sort of public domain” (Public History 14). Shared authority turns minority communities from ignored participants of history into authors of their own narratives. The concept of shared authority is linked with the changing roles of historians, changing historiography, and, as Frisch directs, it can “promote a more democratized and widely shared historical consciousness, consequently encouraging broader participation in debates about history, debates that will be informed by a more deeply representative range of experiences, perspectives, and values” (A Shared

Authority xxiii). Although it is not entirely clear whether the notion of shared authority originates directly

from history from below debates, we can find a similar interest in biased traditional historical narratives. Indeed, public history calls for minority communities, among others, to contribute their historical narratives to history-writing processes, while the practice of shared authority ideally allows minority communities to become participatory “authors” in the “writing” of new narratives.

Both history from below movements and the public history field seek to supplement traditional historical narratives, recognizing that multiple narratives result in a contextually-rich history. Similar to this, the act of sharing authority with communities does not mean [public] historians must relinquish authority and makes space for the knowledge from the community to be recognized. As Frisch

understanding of sharing authority stresses that it “should be not only a distribution of knowledge from those who have it to those who do not, but a more profound sharing of knowledges, an implicit and

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sometimes explicit dialogue from very different vantages about shape, meaning, and implications of history” (A Shared Authority xxiii). Non-traditional narratives require engagement on the part of both historian and public, both made more active and reflective participants through the principle of shared authority.

As Frisch noted in 2011, “'a shared authority’…suggests something that ‘is’ - that in the nature of oral and public history, we are not the sole interpreters. Rather, the interpretive and meaning-making process is in fact shared by definition” (From a Shared Authority 127). To combat traditional narratives, public history practices focus on the engagement between institutions and minority communities to create non-traditional narratives; ones which author is the minority community and authority is shared by both the institution and the minority community to supplement the current, biased traditional historical narrative and create a complex, diversified, and therefore more representative historical record. As this thesis proposes, minority home movies can be the source for non-traditional narratives when authority is shared. Frisch not only writes about shared authority in relation to public history, but also oral history in

Shared Authority. As has been noted elsewhere, these two fields “share a natural affinity, both having

attracted practitioners and audiences different from those of more traditional history writing” (Ritchie 28). The concept of shared authority has been long associated with both oral and public history as the two share methodologies and relations with the public. For these reasons, oral history serves as an example for the ways in which minority home movie collections can operate with principles of shared authority.

Oral history, much like public history, is a field of study as well as “a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities and participants in past events” (Oral History: Defined). As Donald Ritchie explains in his book Doing Oral History, the field “collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews. An oral history interview generally consists of a well-prepared interviewer questioning an interviewee and recording their exchange in audio or video format” (1). As identified by Ritchie, in order to “do” oral history, historians must engage with the public, the source of their history.

Cauvin, too, notes that an important distinction in oral history is that it is concerned “as much about the narrators as about the events narrated. What is said draws upon the narrator’s linguistic conventions and cultural assumptions and hence is an expression of identity, consciousness, and culture’ (Public History 102). As such, oral history focuses not only on the historical narrative being created, but on the creator of the historical narrative, recognizing that there is as much historical richness from the new authors as there is from their new narratives. As Ritchie recognizes, oral history may be helpful in filling the gaps which “exist in what written records can contribute to our understanding of the actions of whole groups of people who, perhaps because of gender, race, class, or ethnicity, have not been represented in the archival collections” (163). As is the goal of history from below and public history, the practice of oral history promotes the production (and research) of non-traditional narratives from, as this thesis is concerned with, racial minority communities and their respective home movies.

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An important distinction, as noted by Cauvin is that in oral history “what is collected is not the event but its memory through individual experience. … it is important to acknowledge the part played by subjectivity in public history and the fact that this does not preclude serious analytical work” (Public

History 101). Since both oral history and minority home movie collections are tied to individual or group

experience, historians’ or archivists’ experience can provide contextualization while sharing authority allows the community to be active in the creation of non-traditional historical narratives. In this context, Frisch writes:

Memory is living history, the remembered past that exists in the present. In one sense, it is a force that can be tapped, unleashed, and mobilized through oral and public history to stand as an alternative to imposed orthodoxy and officially sanctioned versions of historical reality; it is a route to a broadly distributed authority for making new sense of the past in the present. (A Shared Authority xxiii)

This chapter has demonstrated how, in light of changing historiography, fields of study like public history have sought to share authority between historians and new historical authors. Related fields, like oral history, that are based on these inclusive practices, provide a comparative tool to assess minority home movie collections as a new source of historical narratives. In response, this thesis builds on such work for its framing of minority home movies collections as having the potential to act (and, as demonstrated by the following case studies, are already acting) as a source of non-traditional historical narratives. In Chapter 3, the conceptual lens of shared authority is brought to bear on minority home movie collections, after investigating three case studies, as a means of evaluating to what extent inclusive practices are being carried out today in relation to the institutions’ collection, cataloguing, and

presentation practices. Today, there are minority home movie collections in existence throughout the US, although Chapter 2 will demonstrate that the change in historiography that facilitated the creation of public history was also significant in shaping the archival appreciation of home movies and the context within which they were treated and studied..


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Chapter 2. Home Movie Archiving in the United States

As they move from attics to archives, from private use to public reclamation, home movies transform into public memory, mobilizing history as something particular, local, specific. What was fictional can transform into fact; what was factual can suggest a new fictional alchemy.

Patricia Zimmerman (16-17) 2.1 Changing Archival Regards towards Home Movies

For historians across various fields, the increasingly critical attitude to the traditional historical narrative prompted the reconsideration of what could be alternative sources for creating non-traditional historical narratives. In response, this chapter explores home movies as a source of such non-traditional narratives and proposes that home movie collections in archives, particularly those focusing on home movies from racial minority communities, have the potential to become moving-image sources for constructing non-traditional narratives. This is made possible by, concurrent to the changes in historiography, changes in archival considerations towards home movies, which highlights their relevance outside of the personal or family settings, and include them in archival collections.

As noted earlier, the definition of home movies used in this thesis comes from the Center for Asian American Media, which is that home movies are “unique cultural documents recorded on amateur motion picture film (generally on 16mm, 8mm, or Super 8mm and a few esoteric gauges)” (History &

Significance of 8mm/16mm Film). The production of home movies on small gauge film became a hobby

for more Americans with the introduction of 8mm film stock in 1932, which cost half the price of

previously-introduced 16mm film stock (Citron 7). When Super 8mm film stock was introduced in 1965, shooting on film became even more affordable and technically accessible (Citron 7). The result was more cameras in the hands of middle-class Americans which, in turn, led to the increase of filmic

documentation produced by and of a wide range of different types of (still predominantly middle-class) communities across the United States.

Due to the way in which home movies developed, archives have traditionally regarded home movies as an amateur’s pastime, resulting in consumer byproducts that are not relevant beyond the home setting (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 1). According to archives theorist Terry Cook, the reexamination of the history making process led to changes in archives which opens the door for home movies reconsideration. As Cook writes: “With a focus on record-creating processes rather than on recorded products, core theoretical formulations about archives will change” (Cook 21). For Cook, such changes are

understanding producing a shift, by moving “the theoretical (and practical) focus of archival science away from the record and toward the creative act or authoring intent or process or functionality behind the record” (24). In other words, Cook is stressing the necessary analytical shift for institutions that collect and create archival records and the ways in which they reconsider their practices and sources.

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Film scholars Karen Ishizuka and Patricia Zimmerman have charted the significant change in the consideration of home movies, shifting “from private use to public reclamation”, as indicated by the quote at the start of this section. Ishizuka and Zimmerman note that the turning point for the interest, awareness and eventual collection of home movies began in 1993, prompted by hearings held by the United States government in efforts to “assess the state of film preservation, access, and archives” (11). During the hearings, testimonies were given by a wide range of archival institutions from across the nation, including those at the forefront of amateur film collection: Northeast Historic Film, the Prelinger Archives, Human Studies Film Archives at the Smithsonian Institution, and the Japanese American National Museum (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11). All archives present during the hearings recognized the importance for archival practices to include the preservation our nations visual history; however, those at the forefront of amateur film collection recognized Hollywood-produced films dominated archives preservation and restoration projects up until that point and that film materials beyond Hollywood features was being largely ignored (Film Preservation 1993; see also Ishizuka and Zimmerman 13). They stated that Hollywood features constituted only “one layer of our national visual culture legacy” and “emphasized that amateur film and home movies were often the only cinematic materials documenting and tracing regional history and minority voices” (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11). Changing historiography and recognizing practices which historically privileged Hollywood films, these archives called for particular attention to be paid to other “layers of national visual culture legacy”, including minority home movies. It is important to emphasize that minority home movie collections, according to these institutions, often serve as the only cinematic materials documenting the voices of the respective minority communities.

It is important to emphasize that minority home movie collections, according to these institutions, can often be the only cinematic materials documenting the voices of the respective minority communities. As Jasmyn Castro emphasizes in Black Home Movies Time to Represent, published Fall 2019 in the collection of essays entitled Screening Race in American Nontheatrical Film: “The increasingly affordable home movie camera allowed for amateur access to filmmaking and resulted in the ability of individuals from underrepresented and marginalized groups to record their own lives, experiences, and stories” (275). The 1993 hearings signaled a change in archival consideration in regards to minority home movies to become recognized as valuable sources for creating new historical narratives with specific benefits for minority communities. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that they are often the only audio-visual sources from communities which can contribute to the construction of non-traditional narratives. To again reference the quote at the beginning of this section, the shift of home movies "from private use to public reclamation” is paralleled by the historiographic shifts outlined previously as the history from below movement. Similar to the historians who recognized traditional narratives in the historical record and call for supplemental, non-traditional narratives, archivists have become increasingly aware of the dominant position of Hollywood productions in the archive and, as a result, have called for

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more attention to be paid to “amateur” films, such as home movies. Castro recognizes this as well, noting 4

“as archives increasingly are expanding their collections to include amateur film, the overall diversity of the moving image material allows for a more comprehensive picture of the myriad uses of film.” (Black

Home Movies 275).

Institutions, archives and otherwise, aware of the traditional historical narrative and multiple interpretations of history participate in methodologies of public history; a result of broader shifts in historiography. Parallel to this shift in historiography, archival considerations of relevant sources have shifted as well to include amateur film and home movies. This has resulted in the increase of academic works and archival practices related to this type of material. To name a small, more recent sample, there is the Orphans Film Symposium which, starting in 1999, is held every two years and moved online for their 2020 symposium amid COVID-19 restrictions (The Orphan Film Symposium). The Center for Home Movies who encourage home movie scholarship and have, since 2003, promote the annual Home Movie Day, which “is a celebration of amateur films and filmmaking held annually at many local venues

worldwide” (Home Movie Day). Within the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) is the Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee (Small Gauge Amateur Film Committee), while MoMA’s 2020

exhibition How to See Home Movies “take[s] an intimate look at the largest body of moving-image work created in the 20th century” (Yetter). And, finally, Rick Prelinger’s series Lost Landscapes presents life in

American cities over 100 years through the use of home movies (Elgart).

As demonstrated by the short list of existing symposia, initiatives, literature and projects, the increase in amateur and home movie related projects in the years since the 1993 hearings highlight the changing archival considerations. The increasing level of frequency and scope of these home movie is a trend that is still strong today; more archives, conferences, symposiums, initiatives, journals, books, and theses are dedicated to further exploring the potential of home movies (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 13). This trend extends to scholarly research and events surrounding minority home movie collections as well; recent publications, all present in this thesis, such as Screening Race in Non-Theatrical Films published in 2019, which includes multiple articles on minority home movie collections. Evidence of this

development, in addition to the present thesis, include Candace Ming’s article in the journal Black

Camera’s Archival Spotlight entitled “The South Side Home Movie Project: Re-Imagining Black

Chicago”, Jasmyn Castro’s PhD thesis “Unearthing African American History & Culture Through Home

Movies”, and the resulting African American Home Movie Archive, which is active since 2014 and host to the Black Home Movie Index (Black Home Movie Index). An increase in academic and scholarly engagement with minority home movies is similarly reflected in the increase in collections; minority home movie collections themselves can be found today in many different types of institutional settings, as the case studies in the following chapter will demonstrate. The type of institution this thesis examines has

For examples, see archival discussions about challenging the canon in archival collections by Giovanna

4

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been chosen because they are the only locations I was able to identify whose home movie collection focuses solely on minority home movies, with the exception of SSHMP, which focuses on a region rather than on a particular race; however, the South Side of Chicago is historically Black and the archives holdings reflect this.

These archival repositories, through their statements and practices, show that they recognize the ability for their minority home movie collections to construct non-traditional historical narratives. Moreover, their work operates in response to traditional historical narratives in the US, which have historically excluded the narratives of the minority communities that these archives are primarily concerned with. These institutions were chosen as representative of institutions who also have minority home movie collections, both on the basis of their diversity of practices and how they include their respective minority communities. Discussed in depth in the following chapter, the case studies will focus on the following institutions, each with specific initiatives which involve minority home movie

collections: The South Side Home Movie Project at the University of Chicago in Illinois, Memories to Light at the Center for Asian American Media in San Francisco, California, and The Great Migration Home Movie Project at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C..

The South Side Home Movie Project is in the Hyde Park community of Chicago’s historically Black South Side (Fig. 1) and is supported by the University of Chicago and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the Film Studies Center, the Women’s Board of the University of Chicago, and the Office of Civic Engagement’s Community Program Accelerator. Founded in 2005 by University of Chicago professor Dr. Jacqueline Stewart, the South Side Home Movie Project “seeks to increase understanding of the many histories and cultures comprising Chicago’s South Side, and of amateur filmmaking practices, by asking owners of home movies (shot on 8mm, Super8mm, 16mm film) to share their footage and describe it from their personal perspectives” (The South Side Home Movie Project.

About Us). According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) which generates data

profiles for Chicago communities, South Chicago is made up of more than 75% Black residence (3) who have made up the majority of residence on the South Side since waves from the Great Migration brought Black residence to Chicago from 1910 to 1960. As Candace Ming writes in Archival Spotlight The South

Side Home Movie Project: Re-Imagining Black Chicago:

Knowing that the South Side is an economically and racially divers area that has undergone incredible changes over the last fifty years, Stewart imagined that collecting material from this source would produce a rich archive and contribute directly to

changing the negative narrative about these communities that persist in both national and local media (295).

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Figure 1. Map of Chicago's community areas, grouped by color by “side.” 2008. Peter Fitzgerald. CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons. <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>.

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), founded in 1980 and located in San Francisco, California, is a nonprofit organization and the largest distributor of Asian American media in the US. CAAM focuses on “presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible” and it seeks to present audiences to “new voices and communities, advancing our collective understanding of the American experience” (About CAAM). As

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6/20/2020 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Chicago_community_areas_map.svg Hyde Park Woodlawn Wash-ington Park South Shore South Chicago South Deering Hegewisch Greater Grand Crossing Chatham East Side Calumet Heights Avalo n Pa rk (A) Pullm an R iverd ale West Pullman Ros elan d Auburn Gresham Wash-ington Heights Beverly Morgan Park Mount Greenwood Ashburn Engle-Wood West Engle-Wood Chicago Lawn Gage Park Brigton Park New City McKinley Park Bridge-Port Arc her Hei ghts West Elsdon West Lawn Clearing Garfield Ridge Ken-Wood Dou glas Grand Blvd F u lle r P a rk A rm or S qu ar e Near South (B) South Lawndale Lower West Side North Lawndale East Garfield Park Near West Side Loop Near North West Town Humboldt Park Austin West Garf. Park Lincoln Park Lakeview N orth C en ter Lincoln Square Uptown Edge-water West Ridge R og ers Pa rk North Park Albany Park Logan Square Avondale H erm osa Belmont Cragin (C) Dunning Norwood Park E d is o n Pa rk Forest Glen Jefferson Park Portage Park Irving Park O'Hare A. Burnside B. Oakland C. Montclare Central Far North Side Far Southeast Side Far Southwest Side North Side Northwest Side South Side Southwest Side West Side

Chicago

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Crystal Mun-Hye Baik writes in “The Right Kind of Family” Memories to Light and the Home Movie as

Racialized Technology, “the online presence of these digitized home films provides an accessible means

to image the textured lives of Asian Americans during a period characterized by racial violence, exclusion, and loss” (260). Through the initiative Memories to Light: Asian American Home Movies, CAAM asserts that “the power of collective memory and media will bring to life the experiences of Asian American communities from across the country and spanning six decades (1920s-1980s) of the 20th Century” (You Are Viewing About). Memories to Light collects 8mm Super8 and 16mm films and

previously digitized versions of those film formats and has, thus far, “collected over two hundred reels of film from participants throughout California” and hopes to collect Asian American home movies from each state (Mun-Hye Baik 260; About CAAM).

The National Museum of African American History & Culture (NMAAHC), the newest

Smithsonian Institution, opened in 2016 in Washington D.C. next to the national monument, is “the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture. It was established by an Act of Congress in 2003, following decades of efforts to promote and highlight the contributions of African Americans” (About the Museum). As the NMAAHC website notes “while major motion picture film and television historically lacked diverse representation, black history was instinctively being preserved in every day home movies. Today, these personal narratives serve as an invaluable tool for understanding and re-framing black moving image history and culture (The Great

Migration Home Movie Project). Their initiative, The Great Migration Home Movie Project (GMHMP),

is described as “a unique digitization service program that partners the National Museum of African American History & Culture with individuals and organizations across the United States to preserve their important analog audiovisual media” (The Great Migration Home Movie Project). This initiative,

moreover, is committed to free digitization of a large range of formats, spanning, “motion picture film (16mm, Super 8 and Regular 8mm), obsolete videotape formats (Hi-8/8mm, MiniDV, 3/4” U-matic, VHS, Betacam, 1” open reel video, and 1/2” open reel video) and various audio formats” (The Great Migration

Home Movie Project).

As further explicated in the following section, minority home movie collections can be potential sources of a history from below. As such, the moving images provided directly from minority

communities have the potential to construct non-traditional narratives, similar to those of historical narratives of oral history as previously discussed. However, none of this is possible without efforts to engage stakeholders.

2.2 Minority Home Movies as Historical Narrative

In this thesis, it is my contention that minority home movies are crucial resources that offer the potential for audiovisual archives to contribute to the production of new historical narratives. Indeed, as Karen Ishizuka indicated in her written testimony as the curator for the Japanese American National Museum for

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the Congressional hearings in 1993, minority home movies “supply clues into the depth of people's lives, particularly into the emotional and aesthetic content of culture. They are statements about culture, are artifacts of culture and should selectively be preserved” (Karen L. Ishizuka Testimony 2). During the Congressional hearings, the Japanese American National Museum and other participating archives “emphasized that amateur film and home movies were often the only cinematic materials documenting and tracing regional history and minority voices” (Ishizuka and Zimmerman 11). Home movies may be the only cinematic materials documenting minority history, but how can we understand their

representation of minority communities when the collections are located in archives; an inherently powerful, meaning making repository? This section explores the extent that minority home movies can operate as non-traditional historical narratives.

Stated briefly above, archives are not neutral. As archivist Terry Cook points out “archives had their institutional origins in the ancient world as agents for legitimizing such power and for marginalizing those without power” (What is Past is Prologue 18). This power is executed through archival practices, which determine which items are archived and how they are collected, documented, and presented. This power, termed “archivization” in Archive Fever by philosopher Jacques Derrida “produces as much as it records the event” (17). This power is inherent in the creation of the record but also in its maintenance and use (Ketelaar 135), or, in other words, in the collection, documentation, and presentation of the record. The recognition of this power is the same recognition of historiographic bias which, according to Cook “occurs through galleries, museums, libraries, historic sites, historic monuments, public

commemorations, and archives - perhaps most especially through archives” (What is Past is Prologue 18). The act of archiving, not the records themselves, decide what becomes a part of the historical

narrative and this power has traditionally remained with those working in the archive; archivists. As such, minority home movie collections do not automatically become non-traditional historical narratives by being in archives, museums, or other memory sites.

It is important to ensure the records are not merely “removed” by archivists from stakeholders (film donors, community members, etc.), as the principle of sharing authority ensures that power does not remain solely with the archivists yet still relies on the required expertise of archivists. By adopting a principle of shared authority there is the potential for multiple interpretations and various narratives to be elicited from minority home movie materials, providing the archive with a context-rich collection. As Cook wrote in 2003:

If archivists so embrace their roles in more self-conscious archives as historians of the record in its multiple and complex origins, orderings, and representations, as specialists of archival contextual knowledge through time rather than generalists of process and procedure, historians (and all others users) will be afforded richer possibilities for exploring the past through more deeply contextualized archives. (631-632)

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