InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

By employing a Chicana Feminist Epistemology (CFE) and Gloria Anzaldúas Coyolxauhqui analysis in theory, I offer a narrative and examination of the ways to challenge patriarchy through birth stories. More importantly, discuss the ways we build on scholarship offered by Chicanas and Indigena identified women who may or may not be mothers of children, but rather as producers of knowledge; academic, spiritual, or self-fulfilling. In addition, I discuss the ways in which women can piece together the fragmented story of Coyolxauhqui, via the multiplicity of complicated, but critical identities, by sharing their stories.

In the 1970s, Chilean women began creating textiles known as arpilleras (from the Spanish word for burlap) as a way of documenting their lives and experiences. Under the Pinochet regime (1973-1990), arpilleras depicting the difficult, often violent, experiences of Chilean women began to gain global recognition. Through an internship with the Tower Museum archives in Derry~Londonderry in Northern Ireland, I worked with a collection of arpilleras that had been donated by Roberta Bacic, a Chilean lecturer currently living in Northern Ireland who has focused her research on arpilleras. Considered to be both museum artifacts and archival records, these textile works challenge classical professional distinctions drawn between the two categories. Situating their dual categorizations within a combined museum and archival setting allows us to rethink the ways in which traditional definitions of archival records may not only exclude women's voices but also fail to consider how gendered activities and expressions might play a role in records’ formation.

This article examines through an archival lens Tell it to ACT UP and TIARA, the weekly internal papers of the New York and Los Angeles chapters of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). During their short lives, from 1990 to 1992, the papers published news, suggestions, commentary, complaints, and gossip. In spite it challenge to the core archival concept of reliability, this article asserts that gossip provides unique evidence of affect, sex and sexuality, and offers deeper understandings of the individual and group dynamics that made and unmade ACT UP. Gossip, affect, and bodily experience are all knowledges and ways of knowing that have been feminized are therefore frequently devalued and derided in scholarship and practice. The form, content, and tone of these papers are used to make an argument for the value of gossip as a discursive practice. This article contributes to the growing literature in archival studies on conceptualizing and contending with human experiences—especially affects, sex, and bodily experiences—that challenge, defy, and problematize archival capture, theory, and practice asserting that gossip should be deployed as vital source in this larger project.

This paper described numerous issues in traditional and social media representation of the One Billion Rising movement regarding the representation of global feminist agendas. Using this movement as a primary case study, an argument describing the proposed myth of ‘oneness’ embedded within the movement and exposing the issues within this myth are discussed.

During and after World War II the Library of Congress held one of the largest collections of materials regarding sex and sexuality in the world. Largely composed of erotica and items considered to be pornographic or obscene, including books, motion pictures, photographs, and playing cards, the Library’s Delta Collection was separated from the general collection with highly restricted access. This collection was largely composed of materials seized by the Customs Bureau and the Postal Service, in addition to certain materials obtained through the Copyright Office, as the Library of Congress made the final decision regarding destruction, storage, and circulation of such items. The Delta Collection served to protect the materials from mutilation, preserve the cultural record, protect citizens from harmful obscenity, and function as a repository of sample materials for consultation by federal agencies. From evidence supplied by archival papers of the Keeper of the Collections, the office charged with maintaining the Delta Collection, this paper will show that an examination of LC policies and practices adds to our understanding of federal sexual politics and policing, particularly during the McCarthy era. The paper provides a narrative of the events that shaped the creation and maintenance of the Delta Collection and a discussion of its increased political significance during and after the war. It also offers an analysis of the use of the Delta symbol, which has origins in Greek mythology. The aim of is to shed light on the complexities of the Library of Congress’s role as a federal cultural institution in the control of sexually explicit materials.

Day, Ronald E. Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. 170 pp. ISBN 978-0-262-02821-9

Mentoring Away the Glass Ceiling in Academia: A Cultured Critiqued (2015) edited by Brenda L. H. Marina, is a comprehensive examination of women’s experiences in various stages in academia and the way in which mentoring can serve as a tool to break the glass ceiling that keep many women from reaching high positions in academia.Over a qualitative approach this book brings together narratives and counternarratives of women in academia to explore the ways mentorship can help the diversity gap for women by drawing from their own experiences.