Counter Narratives in Practice the Andrew W. Mellon Fellows for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage

Podcast Guests: Jina DuVernay (host), Margarita Vargas-Betancourt (guest)

The collection Margarita discusses is the COVID-19 Florida Farmworkers Collection. The collection includes digital content captured from January 2020 to January 2022, such as websites, videos, petitions and GoFundMes, social media, news articles, and documents from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. The digital content includes the voices, experiences, and opinions of people who are frequently minoritized and underrepresented.

Keywords:  Immigrants, Florida, Farmworkers, Mexico

Link to collection:Collection: COVID-19 Florida Farmworkers Collection | University of Florida Archival & Manuscript Collections (ufl.edu)

Podcast Guests: Jina DuVernay (host), Patrice Green (guest)

Patrice Green and Jina Duvernay discuss rare books, archives, and broader special collections through the lens of Black history and culture. They discuss Charles Blockson, a Penn State alum and avid collector of all things Black history. Mr. Blockson has collections housed at both Temple University and Penn State University that illustrate the breadth and depth of Black intellectualism, expression, creativity, and reality. 

Keywords:  Black history, Black intellectualism, literacy, rare books, archives, memory

Links mentioned during the interview: 

Penn State Blockson Collection https://libraries.psu.edu/about/collections/charles-l-blockson-collection-african-americana-and-african-diaspora

Temple Blockson Collection https://library.temple.edu/blockson 

In her conversation with Jina, Meaghan discusses the origins of the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library, its extensive collections,  and how the SHC came to be known as the preeminent repository on the Antebellum South’s ruling elite. She then delves into how these collections also document the history of enslaved people and how that particular history is often hidden from view. Finally, Meaghan shares the ways that she and her colleagues are working to change that and bring the history of enslaved people to the fore.  

Keywords: “hidden history”, collecting legacy, African American history, conscious editing, records of enslavement

Links mentioned during the interview:  

May Brown Letter: https://finding-aids.lib.unc.edu/00011/#folder_8#1  

UNC Libraries Reckoning Framework: https://library.unc.edu/reckoning/framework/ 

Using Records about Slavery in the Southern Historical Collection: https://guides.lib.unc.edu/researching-records-slavery/home-page

Slavery Era Finding Aid Remediations: https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/SCTS-Documentation/blob/main/Slavery%20Era%20Finding%20Aids%20Remediation.md

Victor Betts begins the conversation with a story of two particular individuals: Justina Williams and Dr. Kenichi Kojima. He shares what interested him about these two and how they were the catalyst to a year-long archival research project that examined the invisible history of Asians and Asian Americans at North Carolina State University. He also talks about the importance of documenting historically marginalized voices in the university collections given the harmful practices and policies of the past that haunts the archives today. Hear his advice on what to do when encountering absences during your archival research process and projects he is currently working on.

Keywords:  African American history, Asian American history, Afro-Asian relationality, university archives, collective memories, archival gaps, archival silences

Links mentioned during the interview: 

go.ncsu.edu/aaa-hst

go.ncsu.edu/rad_scrc

https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/scrc

Dale J. Correa and Suzanne Im highlight a bilingual magazine from the Ottoman Empire, and Pidgin English in Chinese text. Milton Machuca-Galvez, DeLisa Minor Harris, and Rachel E. Winston join the conversation to collectively discuss language representation in special collections.

Bilingualism and Cartoons as Language

In this segment, Dale J. Correa has chosen to focus on the bilingual Ottoman Turkish-French magazine Kalem (issued 1324-1328 AH/1908-1911 CE). UT Austin’s collections contain a remarkable number of periodicals from the early 20th century Middle East, including several that are multi-lingual. Kalem had been the prominent satirical or mizah gazette but was eventually shut down because of its criticism of Sultan Abdülhamid II and the reigning Ottoman political administration. This magazine is relatively unique as a bilingual satirical periodical from this time period because most Ottoman satirical gazettes were primarily in Ottoman Turkish. Even though a good portion of the population was illiterate, Kalem claims 10-13,000 readers in the first several weeks of publication. More significantly, those who were illiterate were nevertheless engaging with this magazine through its cartoons, usually in large social environments like coffeehouses and markets where the magazine could be passed from hand to hand. In this segment, Dale take us through a number of significant cartoons from Kalem to talk about how these cartoons are a form of language and expression beyond the magazine’s already unique bilingualism.

Keywords/tags: Ottoman Empire, satire, cartoons, literacy

This segment examines The Chinese and English Instructor (1862) by T’ong Ting-ku following the theme of language and counternarrative. Developed by a Chinese merchant, this work is a prime example of the use of “language from below” in the form of Pidgin English. In traditional Chinese society, the merchant class was considered the lowest in the Chinese social hierarchy, and many of them had no or limited formal education. Economic, social, and political factors contributed to the rise of Chinese Pidgin English as a bridge language for the purposes of business and trade. 

Keywords/tags: Conversation and phrase books, dictionaries, Pidgin English, Chinese language

Milton Machuca-Galvez, DeLisa Minor Harris, and Rachel E. Winston explore the importance of language documented collections that represent Hispanic and Latino immigrants in Kansas, Haiti, and the musical tradition of calypso.

MYgration Stories: The Oral Histories of Hispanic immigrants in Kansas City, Kansas consist of a nine-page report, interview transcripts, and sound cassettes. It includes recordings of 31 Hispanic and Latino immigrants residing in Kansas City, Kansas, with 24 interviews conducted as part of an oral history project funded by the Kansas Humanities Council and El Centro, Inc. The interviews were conducted from January to October 2003 by project director Rebekah L. Moses and focus on five main areas: basic demographics, immigration experience, expectations versus reality, national identity, and racial discrimination. The project report summarizes the demographics of interviewees and their responses, followed by the interview transcripts arranged alphabetically by surname.

Keywords: Hispanic Migrants; Kansas City, Kansas; Oral History



A collection of 55 rare Haitian books dating between ranging from 1804 to 1950 given to Fisk University by Haiti’s President Paul Magloire in 1955 on the occasion of his trip to Nashville. The collection represents the  Agency and reclaiming Haitian History and Culture, by Haitian people. Global Identity across the African Diaspora. Most the of the book collection is printed in Haitian Kreyol including a significantly rare Haitian pamphlet, Le Document: Organe de la librarie d’Histoire d’Haiti et des (Euvres de la Pensee Haitienne. Each volume included in the collection is bound in a leather material with scenes of Haiti and Haitian history etched into the leather.

Keywords: Haiti, Fisk, Haitian Kreyol, Griots, Caribbean

Calypso Souvenir Booklets from Trinidad and Tobago

Calypso is a musical genre and art form with roots in Trinidad and Tobago and the English speaking Caribbean. Originally an oral tradition, calypso was used as a way to spread news, relay public opinion, and both educate and entertain society. Using calypso souvenir booklets dated 1945, 1947, and 1949 from the Benson Latin American Collection at UT Austin, this segment explores the calypso tradition through the lens of language and counternarrative.

Keywords: Calypso, creole, music, Caribbean

Podcast Guests: Azalea Camacho (host), Talea Anderson (storyteller), Sandy Enriquez, Amalia Medina Castañeda, and Ellen-Rae Cachola

Talea speaks about her experience learning braille as an adult and her attempt to engage with the history of disability. She summarizes the contentious history of tactile print, noting that blind people had to advocate in the 19th and 20th centuries for a system of reading and writing that worked for them. Reflecting on Talea’s story, we explore disability access policies in libraries and web accessibility, discuss outreach to Disabilities programs, and unpack academiaʻs relationship to disability. We also discuss how to talk about disability issues in the classroom by promoting multi-sensory instruction and encouraging multiple learning styles.

Keywords: Tactile print; Accessibility; Disability Studies; Equitable Access; Instruction; Ocularcentrism; Outreach

Podcast Guests: Azalea Camacho (host), Ellen-Rae Cachola (storyteller), Sandy Enriquez, Amalia Medina Castañeda, and Talea Anderson

Ellen-Rae shares an archival story of Chief Justice William S. Richardson, his experience as a mixed-race Native Hawaiian during the Territorial period of Hawaiʻi, and his efforts to lead diverse peoples during the transition to Statehood--a time of political change that is still debated today.  Guests reflect, share, and discuss how aspects of archives have settler colonial histories that impact Indigenous advocacy, ethnic relations, community histories, archival practice, and higher education.

Keywords: Sovereignty; Statehood; Native Hawaiian/Native American/Indigenous Studies; Chicano Studies, Black Studies; Higher Education; Settler Colonialism; Exhibits; Outreach