Abstract
Reviewed by: Maria do Mar Pereira, Warwick University, UK
[Archives and libraries are] lively, fast changing and thoroughly political space[s] with which students can engage both critically and creatively, and within which lies […] the possibility of a multitude of feminist practices. (de Jong and Koevoets, 2013: 3) “It was wonderful to see archive artefacts. As undergraduates, we rarely get this opportunity, which is a shame as it helps apply concepts learned in lectures, and brings course topics to life.” (Second-year undergraduate student, University of Leeds)
Teaching Gender with Libraries and Archives, edited by Sara de Jong and Sanne Koevoets, is one such book. By reframing ‘libraries and archives not only as storehouses of knowledge, but also as objects of reflection in their own right’ (p. 1), it opens up challenging lines of questioning, forcing us to confront a problematic paradox in women’s, gender, feminist studies (WGFS): the ‘paradox that the people (often women) engaged with collecting […] knowledge for and about women […] [archivists, librarians and information specialists] have remained largely invisible themselves’ (p. 1). Or, as one librarian compellingly observes: ‘[l]ibrarians are the housewives of gender studies; the work we do is simply expected to be done, but we are invisible […]. It is only when things go wrong that we are noticed’ (p. 1).
The book offers a nuanced discussion of the manifestations and effects of this paradox, touching on relations of power between academics and librarians/archivists (Aleksander), the feminisation of librarianship (Koevoets and de Jong), the links between libraries/archives and social movements (Claeys), or the challenges posed by institutionalisation, professionalisation, and technological change (de Jong and Wieringa; Aleksander; and Radicioni and Virtú). In so doing, it makes a persuasive case for the pedagogical value and political importance of more reflexive and active engagement with feminist libraries/archives on the part of WGFS scholars and students. And yet, there are many obstacles to such an engagement. From a 2013 survey of academic staff at a UK university, 1 I discovered that many colleagues were keen to find out more about feminist libraries/archives and integrate them into their teaching. However, they reported that they were unable to find the time to explore collections and design activities based on them. This book is written precisely to address, and to help overcome, such obstacles.
The book constitutes the 10th volume in Atgender’s 2 excellent Teaching with Gender series and, like other books in the series, it presents itself as a practical pedagogical tool, aiming to provide suggestions and support to feminist teachers in using libraries/archives to teach gender. Readers will find the volume a ‘treasure trove’ (a term used by several contributors to describe archives/libraries) of ideas and resources for use with undergraduates and postgraduates, across all (inter)disciplines concerned with gender. The proposed activities explicitly position students as active knowledge producers (rather than passive consumers), promoting interactive and collaborative learning.
What makes this open-access book especially useful is the fact that the many concrete suggestions for activities are presented in a clear and practical way. This means that colleagues who feel acutely time-pressured can skim through it and quickly find countless ready-to-use activities to enrich any seminar or module. Particularly valuable elements of the book include: the comprehensive list of European feminist archives/libraries in the appendix; Bogadóttir’s suggestions for using archives to sensitise students to the gender politics of the public/private divide; de Jong, Meulmeester, and Vriend’s creative proposals for utilising the FRAGEN database of feminist texts from twenty-nine European countries (http://www.fragen.nu) to generate discussion about canon formation, the dilemmas of cross-cultural comparison, or the nature of feminist manifestos; Perry’s reflections on deploying FRAGEN to challenge gender-blindness in foreign language teaching; and Maxwell’s call for teachers to invite students to participate in broader community-based research projects on women’s lives.
However, this book deserves much more than a cursory reading in search of quick tips, because it is truly exemplary in its articulation of the pedagogical and analytical. It goes far beyond its practical pedagogical aims, and also includes sophisticated theoretical and epistemological reflections on the nature of libraries/archives, and their role within knowledge production processes in WGFS. I particularly enjoyed: Baider and Zobnina’s examination of the (heterosexist) politics of cataloguing; Koevoets and de Jong’s and de Jong and Wieringa’s analyses of poststructuralism’s challenges to the library/archive; and Koevoets’ call for a reconceptualisation of the library.
Teaching Gender with Libraries and Archives is a refreshing and inspiring book. Its thought-provoking deconstruction of the mundane acts of searching archive catalogues or fetching books from library shelves is guaranteed to make you look at archives, libraries, and your own module reading lists in a new way. This is precisely the kind of effect that a good feminist publication should have on its readers.