Embodied Archives and Bodies of Knowledge: 8 Questions with Associate Professor Jamie A. Lee, MA IRLS '11, PhD '15

As a queer, first-gen scholar, I am committed to creating classrooms that recognize what students bring to the classroom; I center community and family knowledges and lived/living histories as integral to how and what we learn, together.

  
Associate Professor and School of Information Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Dr. Jamie A. Lee joined the School of Information in 2015, after earning their PhD in Information Resources and Library Science (now PhD in Information) and Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona. As co-director of the iSchool’s Critical Archives and Curation Collaborative (co/lab), their areas of focus range from participatory research, interactive multimodality and innovative collaboration to embodied archives and bodies of knowledge—and much more.

What brought you to the iSchool, and where were you located and what were you doing before you joined the school/college?

Community archives brought me! In 2008, shortly after moving to Tucson from the Midwest, I started Arizona's first LGBTQ archives. It began as an oral history archives centering digital media, storytelling and moving image archiving. At that time, I was more conversant in documentary and social-justice media than in archival studies, which is, in part, what led me to study archives. Before entering graduate school in 2010, I had spent more than two decades in media—as creative director in broadcast TV, editor and producer at a film production company, and as small business co-owner/owner of a multimedia production company (Twin Cities and Tucson). I collaborated on and created nonprofit, corporate, commercial, fashion and educational media which afforded me the opportunity to produce and direct award-winning social justice documentary films. It was in this context that I developed and deepened my commitment to the principles and practices of social justice media-making.

In Tucson, I expanded my attention from media production to archives. I co-created a community archives and then began to study archives. At 41, I earned my MA in Information Resources and Library Science (now MA in Library and Information Science). I was—and remain—especially honored to be a part of Knowledge River's Cohort 9. I worked with Sandy Littletree, Knowledge River Scholars Program director at the time, and a group of Arizona’s tribal librarians to establish the Stories of Arizona’s Tribal Libraries Oral History Project.
  

  

I learned the vitally important role that libraries can play as gathering spaces and as spaces of shared learning and storytelling in each community. Working with tribal librarians, I also learned more about place-based research practices with respect and about decolonizing methodologies. With Sandy’s ongoing support and encouragement, I went on to intern at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in their media department. While there, I brought my media experience together with my studies in archives. I produced YouTube vignettes focused on contemporary Native artists who were featured in NMAI’s contemporary arts gallery. These vignettes are now a part of the NMAI archives. While there, I also had the opportunity to consult with the Smithsonian’s oral historian to develop a standard operating procedure for oral history processes.

With a deeper understanding of archives, I went on to pursue my doctorate. At 45, I earned my PhD in Information Resources and Library Science and Gender and Women's Studies. My dissertation, A Queer/ed Archival Methodology: Theorizing Practice through Radical Interrogations of the Archival Body, is an interdisciplinary project that developed what I call a queer/ed archival methodology and brought together my scholarly interests in the body—embodied archives and bodies of knowledge—storytelling, oral history, critical theory, social justice media and my practical experience in community archives.

I was the last doctoral student conferred through SIRLS in Spring 2015 and the new School of Information's first hire in 2015.

What is your current research, and what most excites you about this work?

I am currently at work on a number of projects!

I am very excited to have recently co-created the Critical Archives and Curation Collaborative, co/lab, with iSchool Professor Zack Lischer-Katz. This gathering—think & create—space is a culmination of my interests in participatory research, interactive multimodality and innovative collaboration. We are continuing to work to establish a collaborative network within the iSchool with faculty and students as well as across campus with others working at the intersections of memory, archives, storytelling, multimodal media, digital curation and long-term preservation. It is what I call a responsive space that will continue to take shape and shift as new constituencies engage it. Stay tuned for more details on this exciting space!

One project I am excited to be working on is the digital archives for secrets of the agave: a Climate Justice Storytelling Project. This digital humanities project brings together my early documentary filmwork along the U.S./Mexico borderlands with recordings I made as part of the Climate Alliance Mapping Project, which I co-directed with Professor Tracey Osborne (formerly from UArizona). I am connecting these projects with climate justice digital storytelling workshops I've developed and conducted through my Haury Faculty Fellowship in partnership with BorderLinks, a local nonprofit that centers popular education to teach visiting delegations from around the world about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Relatedly, I have also started building relationships with Sonoran Institute and American Rivers to further expand the scholarly scope and storytelling capacity of this project. It's an important and timely project that is growing to include the lived histories, experiences, knowledges and aspirations of more communities to tell about their local environments and ecologies. If folks are interested in participating, they should email me.

The digital archives is scheduled to be launched this spring and can be found as part of the project's website at www.secretsoftheagave.com.

I also continue to direct the Arizona Queer Archives (AQA), which is turning 16 this year. I work directly with community members and students in a sort of archival lab setting where together we process collections. I use “queer” in the name of the archives as a verb to unsettle and disrupt the traditional archival paradigm to make room for different ways of being and belonging in archival contexts. This naming is directly connected to my scholarly engagement with the emergent sub-field critical archival studies that questions taken-for-granted archival practices and structures. Related to my ongoing interests in and commitment to the principles of social justice media-making, the AQA regularly works with living-collection donors so they, too, can actively participate in processing and describing their own collections. I am committed to engaging community members through life transitions and attending to their everyday ephemera to honor their historical contributions locally. The AQA is a distributed archives which means it is differently and simultaneously situated in the LGBTQ+ Institute on campus as a cutting-edge research initiative there, the UArizona Special Collections through shared stewardship as one of their main collecting areas, and at Blacklidge Community Collective where local folx can be trained in archiving and oral history productions while also working on exhibit creation, curation and outreach. All three spaces offer distinct possibilities for access and growth through new and old connections and networks.
 

What are you currently teaching, and what do you most enjoy about teaching?

I designed and regularly teach Community-Based Archives and Museums as well as Archival Appraisal and Description as part of our MA in Library and Information Science curriculum. In spring 2020, I also had the opportunity to co-design and co-teach the graduate seminar we called The Politics of the Archive/s, SCCT 510, with Professor Anita Huizar-Hernandez (Spanish and Portuguese).

I enjoy teaching about the archives, their complexities and their power to name and introduce peoples and communities historically. I bring together practice and theory to get students to think both critically and creatively about informal and formal community archives, including how archives are made and what they can do in the world. I emphasize the importance of community archives as spaces to honor local folx and non-dominant (historically marginalized) communities as historic actors and as historically relevant. I get excited by how students come to see the many possibilities that emerge within mainstream archives to address the disparities in whose histories are collected, preserved and made accessible.

How do you bring your research into your teaching?

When I teach any course, I connect students to archives. Together, we consider the power of memory-making practices and the generative implications of producing memories. As a scholar situated in critical and cultural theory, questioning power and how it circulates is key to understanding who has the authority over their own memories, the preservation of those memories and the access to them as lived and living histories. My book—the first research monograph published in the Studies in Archives and Recordkeeping Series at Routledge—Producing the Archival Body (2021) brings bodies and archives, each and both as bodies of knowledge, together to question power.

My scholarly interest is in archival studies, critical archival studies, and my teaching emphasis is in critical archival practices and community archives. As a queer, first-gen scholar, I am committed to creating classrooms that recognize what students bring to the classroom; I center community and family knowledges and lived/living histories as integral to how and what we learn, together. As part of my pedagogy, I encourage and support students to publish their final papers in these courses and am pleased that a number have published them in the leading archival studies journals.
 

The “iSchool experience” is much more than creating technology; it questions power, human impact, climate change, safety and access. Today is an exciting time to be a part of the iSchool!

Beyond research and teaching, what are your passions?

My partner and I enjoy cooking and photography and we love the outdoors. We hike with our two dogs (Cielo and Cowboy) every morning. We have a love of home and practice radical hospitality at every opportunity. We spend time around the kitchen table with family and friends or along some hiking trail looking at the sunrise or sunset or spying birds in their daily routines. We have two grown daughters who live on opposite coasts (California and New York!) and a new grandbaby on the way in early 2024. We cannot wait!

What accomplishments and awards are you particularly proud of in your academic career?

I am a first-gen college student. I do not take my access to higher education for granted and consider my doctorate an important achievement in my life. It is important to me to be a queer-identified faculty on our campus and in the community. In 2019, I was awarded the Fabulous Faculty Award at the UArizona Rainbow Graduation as well as the Students Choice! Teaching Award for the iSchool. Both are recognitions I am honored to have received.
 

What does the “iSchool experience” mean to you?

The “iSchool experience,” for me, centers inter- and trans-disciplinarity, which is integral in our UArizona iSchool vision: “We explore the intersections of people, data and technology, empowering a diverse, equitable and inclusive future through information.” I believe that UArizona iSchool focuses on people in distinct ways; our Knowledge River Scholars Program and other research lab contexts consider the human complexities in efforts to increase access to and understanding of technologies and human memory- and history-making processes and productions. The “iSchool experience” is much more than creating technology; it questions power, human impact, climate change, safety and access. Today is an exciting time to be a part of the iSchool!

What advice do you have for iSchool students?

I encourage students to be in touch with the experiential and learned knowledges they arrive with and to cultivate their curiosity so as to take advantage of the uniquely interdisciplinary nature of our school.
  

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Learn more about Jamie A. Lee on their faculty page, or explore ways you can support the dynamic faculty of the School of Information and their research and teaching.