On Wednesday, 29 March 2023, the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage at Rare Book School launched Counter Narratives in Practice, a podcast series about multicultural heritage collections, storytelling, and representation in galleries, libraries, archives, museums, and beyond. This podcast is part of a larger project that highlights the work of the RBS Cultural Heritage Fellows.
The Fellows, led by book historian Allie Alvis, worked together from across the U.S. to tell stories about the archival materials in their collections and how those stories can prompt thinking about counter narratives in professional practice.
The University of Texas Libraries’ Liaison for Middle Eastern Studies Dale Correa and Black Diaspora Archivist Rachel Winston are contributors to the project.
The podcast episodes, which are now all available, include:
Archiving Political Histories that Shape Education and Disconnection and Accessibility in the Archive
Guests highlight the roles of Indigenous advocacy, settler colonialism, disability, and accessibility in archival collections.
We Were Never Silent: Immigrant Narratives & Caribbean Print Culture as Counter Narrative and We Were Never Silent: Bilingual Text in the Ottoman Empire & Pidgin English in Chinese Text as Counter Narratives
Guests explore immigration, oral history, and music as they relate to formal and informal institutions of memory.
Hidden Histories: African American, Asian American, and Afro-Asian Relationality and Hidden Histories: Immigrant Farm Workers and Black Intellectual Histories
Guests discuss Florida Farmworkers, Covid-19, and the importance of documenting marginalized stories.
The Cultural Heritage Fellows Podcast Team are:
Ellen-Rae Cachola, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Law Library
Talea Anderson, Washington State University
Azalea Camacho, California State University, Los Angeles
Sandy Enriquez, University of California Riverside
Amalia Medina Castañeda, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Milton Machuca-Galvez, University of Kansas
Dale J. Correa, University of Texas at Austin
DeLisa Minor Harris, Fisk University
Rachel E. Winston, University of Texas at Austin
Suzanne Im, University of California, Irvine
Meaghan Alston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, University of Florida
Jina DuVernay, Gwinnett County Public Library
Victor Betts, North Carolina State University Libraries
Patrice Green, Penn State University Libraries
