Reckoning: Enviornmental Activism

By

During our sessions in the archives, we were able to collect lots of valuable information about the success activist groups had with environmental awareness and service events. We found many different photos of service projects, collegian articles about the work of activist groups like ASHES, and the most information about donations from the Brown family to create Kenyon's most prominent environmentalist contribution the BFEC. The archives we found were very hopeful and inspiring and we were mostly pleasantly surprised, Kenyon is extremely grateful for the opening of the BFEC in 1995 and the growth from the donation in 1999 in honor of Robert Bowen Brown (former provost) and his family, however upon further reflection, we began to ask questions like: Are there perspectives left out of these archives? I believe that there is reckoning and restoration to be practiced in order to understand Kenyon's history with Environmental activism in the most complete way. 

In Chapter 6 of Yazdiha's work The Struggle for the People's King she discusses how voices from marginalized groups have been sidelined and neglected in the history of social movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter. Yazdiha writes, "Me Too and Black Lives Matter opened a space for historical reckoning. Society not only failed Anita Hill but had failed Black Women" (Yazdiha 2023:172). Yazdiha calls for active restoration and reckoning in order to properly acknowledge and take responsibility for exclusion and misrepresentation within social movements. 

After reading Yazdiha's work while working in the archives, I have been thinking more about how certain lenses can frame narratives in different way but can also leave out critical voices within a movement. When we initially started looking through the archives we were just happy to have the pieces we did and were excited to learn about the different strudent organizations we didn't even know about before starting this project. But as we continued looking through the archives over the past few weeks Yazdiha pushed us to question who may be being left out of these archives. We should do more research in what narratives/histories there are that aren't found in the archives and work to restore these voices by pushing to add them into the archives. Our job is not only to look through the history we have but also actively research for narratives that could be left out currently. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Show Her It's a Man's World": Advertising the Power Dynamics in Marriage

By
Image
  The image above includes two ads side by side, a project curated by artist and photographer Eli Rezkallah as part of a photo series called “In a Parallel Universe.” The ad to the left features a man lying in bed, his arms propped up, hands behind his head in a relaxed manner. Several white pillows prop him up, and white sheets cover his legs. He wears a white button-up shirt and a colorful tie, looking contently off into the distance. Below him, a woman, presumably his wife, kneels beside his bed, wearing a pink bathrobe. She looks up at him and is depicted in the process of placing a tray before him, featuring plates of food, a teapot, and a cup. Black text in the upper left corner of the image reads, “show her it’s a man’s world” and the bottom of the image displays a larger drawing of a tie and the words “Van Heusen” and “man’s world.” The second ad, on the right, exhibits a woman lying in a white-sheeted bed and propped up by many pillows. Like the man in the other ad, she si...
Read more

Taiwanese independence: solidarity in the civil sphere?

By
Image
This is a photo of Taiwan's newly elected president, Lai Ching-te, who was screened while speaking during Taiwan's national day. He made several overseas official visits last year, aiming to bolster friendship and form new relations with like-minded democracies to assert the island's independence from the People's Republic of China. In this image, Lai is speaking under the flag that is the official representative of Taiwan (ROC), a totem in modern times understood as a provocative response against the Communist Party. The flag is composed of blue, white and red, symbolizing the spirit of freedom, equality and fraternity. In addition, the flag is derived from and modified base on the previous flag held by the Kuo Ming Tang (KTM) party that Lai vows to pursue, with the three color symbolizing the party's three principles: nationality, civil rights and people's livelihood. Noticeably, in this image, the flag occupies half of the space, almost about to cover Lai him...
Read more

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: the power elite in the dark

By
Image
  This photo is a group character shot from the TV series “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” showcasing the valuable high-tech control instruments and displays aboard the spacecraft. The series, created by Joss Whedon, is based on the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization from Marvel Comics. The full name of “S.H.I.E.L.D.” is Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, which was formed by the Allied powers during World War II to combat H.Y.D.R.A., an enemy armed with dangerous advanced technologies. The daily operations of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are highly confidential, dealing with supernatural phenomena that pose threats to national security. Access to various intelligence and information within S.H.I.E.L.D. requires sufficient security clearance to protect secrets from falling into enemy hands. The agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. include those who have been secretly resurrected, martial arts experts, combat spies, hackers, scientists specializing in physical and biochemical sciences, a...
Read more