Working with diasporic communities has moved a long way from a focus on service provision and ESL classes. In this session, we will review the literature on diaspora through the lens of information flows and practices. While centering the voices and agency of members of diasporic communities, we will call on information professionals (librarians, archivists, museum professionals, UX designers and data scientists] to shift their thinking about how they perceive these communities, discuss what meaningful and effective engagement looks like, and encourage everyone to confront not only their own biases but also to speak up against the systems that contribute to further marginalize these groups.

Dr. Nadia Caidi is a scholar of information (and) marginalization and the role that information resources, institutions, and technologies play in the everyday lives of individuals and communities in various states of transition. Her research has been conducted in the context of global migration, language communities in a minority context, techno-spiritual and religious practices, and diversity by design in the information fields.

Lecture Resources: 

• Nadia Caidi and S. MacDonald (2008) Information Practices of Canadian Muslims Post 9/11.  Government Information Quarterly 25(3): 348-378. 

• Nadia Caidi, S. Muzaffar and E. Kalbfleisch (2024) Contested Imaginaries: Workfinding Information Practices of STEM-Trained Immigrant Women in Canada. Journal of Documentation 80(4): 939-961. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2023-0200. 

Dr. Sefanit Habtom joins us for a conversation with Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar about the politics of solidarity and allyship in settler Canada. This intervention complicates and deepens our understanding of the interconnecting systems of oppression that impact Indigenous, Black and other racialized people, as well as the potential and limits of solidarity, allyship and co-conspiratship on stolen land under late racial capital.

Dr. Sefanit Habtom is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Washington's College of Education. She is the Research-Practice Manager for a project in partnership between the College of Education, The Office of African American Male Achievement at Seattle Public Schools, elementary school educators, and Black families to design literacy tools from cultural and home-based practices that cultivate identity-affirming critical literacies. Sefanit holds a Ph.D. in Social Justice Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where she spent three years coordinating an afterschool program with Black and Indigenous high school students in the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab (directed by Dr. Eve Tuck). Her research focuses on Black student activism at postsecondary institutions and within their surrounding communities, and she utilizes participatory, visual, and critical qualitative research methods. She is passionate about thinking with Black communities who struggle towards a better world. 

Lecture Resources:

• Sefanit Habtom and Megan Scribe (June 20, 2020) To Breathe Together: Co-Conspirators for Decolonial Futures (Yellowhead Institute).  

What are some important ethical considerations when conducting feminist digital humanities research on/from the Global South? Thanks to diligent efforts by archivists to record Arabic language knowledge on the internet, the proliferation of digital archives after the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to expanding the availability of sources on Arab women online. Digital research has been particularly useful in the development of Arab feminist knowledge from the early 19th and 20th centuries, as its physical traces are scattered across different mediums, across many countries, and in, at least, three languages. Libyan writer Fawziyyaa Mohammad Baryoun, who wrote a book on 19th century Lebanese feminist Zaynab Fawwaz (1860-1914) in 1997, released a second book on Fawwaz in 2022 based on new findings from digital repositories. In an interview, Baryoun expressed how the new information offered through digital archives have drastically expanded her earlier knowledge on the topic. Reflecting on my work in building the “Arab women’s media history digital archive”, in the lecture, I discuss how, depending on the time and place, knowledge on Arab women’s media traditions is constantly evolving as researchers continue to innovate in their search for our repressed histories.

Dr. Mariam Karim is a Global Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ). She completed her PhD at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information (iSchool) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI). She served as an inaugural graduate fellow at the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative and was the recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral award. She holds an Honours BA in Visual Culture & Communications from the University of Toronto and a MA in Cultural Studies & Critical Theory from McMaster University. She situates contemporary uses of digital media through historical inquiry and studies Arabic mass media in the context of media imperialism and colonialism. To do this, she follows Arab women's expansive mass media practices, contributions, and ideas from the 20th century as central points of reference. Her interests lie at the intersections of multilingual media, information, gender, politics, translation, infrastructure, historical, archival, visual, and literary studies, and decolonization.

Lecture Resources: 

• Sherene Razack (2005) “How is white supremacy embodied? Sexualized racial violence at Abu Ghraib.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 17(2): 341-363. 

Dr. T.L. Cowan joins us for a conversation with Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar about ethics, refusal and digitality, challenging and pushing past reductionist and liberal ideas of digital freedom and internet democracy. Drawing on many years’ experience working and thinking alongside and with primarily trans- feminist, queer, and disabled/disordered communities, this intervention complicates and deepens our understanding of the potential and limits of digital media, technologies and spaces on stolen land under late capital.

Dr. T.L. Cowan (she/they) is Associate Professor of media studies in the Department of Arts Culture and Media (UTSC) and the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, as well as a cabaret and video artist. Their research focuses on cultural and intellectual economies and networks of minoritized digital media and performance practices focusing primarily on trans- feminist, queer, and disabled/disordered ways of working. Her creative-research practice moves between page, stage, and screen.

Lecture Resources:

• TL Cowan and Jasmine Rault (June 2020) (under review at Punctum Press) Heavy Processing, Digital Research Ethics Collaboratory: Part I – “Lesbian Processing”; Part II – “Central Processing Units”; Part III – “Risking IT”. [Currently available through Digital Research Ethics Collaboratory website.]

• M. Cifor, P. Garcia, T.L. Cowan, J. Rault, T. Sutherland, A .Chan, J. Rode, A.L. Hoffmann, N. Salehi and L. Nakamura (2019) Feminist Data Manifest-No, https://www.manifestno.com.

Dr. Greg Bak and Robin Neckoway join us for an exploration of what it means for archives to be accountable, particularly in settler Canada to the Indigenous nations whose lands are depicted in their holdings. This session will focus on the case of hydro in Northern Manitoba, drawing on Neckoway's master thesis and his professional work in archives. In contrast to the records of settler states and crown corporations, with their inaccessibility and lack of Indigenous perspectives, we consider ongoing conversations about counter histories and non-traditional records forms, like oral history. The session includes presentations by, and a conversation between, our speakers. 

Robin Neckoway is Ininew from NCN (Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation) in Northern Manitoba. He is a Graduate of the Archival Studies program, and currently works at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. He has a strong interest in decolonization, and the impacts oral history has on societal memory.

Greg Bak is an associate professor of archival studies in the Department of History at the University of Manitoba. His teaching and research focus on archival decolonization, the histories and current practices of digital archiving and the histories of digital cultures.

Lecture Resources:  

• Jarrett M. Drake (2016) RadTech meets RadArch: towards a new principle for archives and archival description. On archivy [Blog].

• Robin Neckoway (2022) Archives, record keeping, and Indigenous knowledge: issues concerning hydro development in northern Manitoba. Thesis, University of Manitoba,pp.1-47.  

This guest lecture will begin with an overview of my role as the Senior Archivist at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and how working more closely with Indigenous communities over the past 4 years has shaped my thinking around provenance and the need to pluralize this archival concept. The lecture will then look at how archival theory and practice can help make better connections between Indigenous peoples and records based on a plural provenance model to assist in addressing inequalities in the arrangement, description, and access of archival materials related to Indigenous peoples. It will then discuss key areas where archives can play a role in assisting community-led research initiatives in terms of records management, stewarding community archives, capacity building, and including Indigenous perspectives into archival acquisition policies and mandates. 

Jesse Boiteau is Senior Archivist at the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation (NCTR) and is a member of the Métis Nation. He completed his Masters in Archival Studies at the University of Manitoba, focusing on the intersections between Western archival theory and practice, and Indigenous notions of archives and memory to shed light on how the NCTR can accommodate and blend multiple viewpoints in its processes. Jesse works within a close archives team to process the records collected by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission in Canada, make new collections available online, and respond to access requests from Residential School Survivors. He is also continually researching ways to leverage new technologies to honour the experiences and truths of Survivors through innovative and participatory archival practices.

Lecture Resources:

• Jesse Boiteau (2024) Whose provenance? Plurality of provenance and the redistribution of archival authority. Archival Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-024-09453-x.

• Association of Canadian Archivist’s Response to the Report of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Taskforce (2020) A reconciliation framework for Canadian archives.