Rare Book School Lecture: Indigenous Agency and Intervention in the Bibliographical Record

Mike Kelly (Head, Archives & Special Collections, Amherst College) will draw from the past thirteen years that he has spent building the Native American Literature Collection in the Archives & Special Collections at Amherst College, as well as current work to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into library, archives, and museum practices. The history of the Indigenous people of North America engaging directly with printing technology extends from the first presses in seventeenth-century New England to the comics, games, and more produced by the Indigenous Imagination Workshop in the twenty-first century. Kelly will demonstrate how a deep knowledge of traditional bibliography coupled with an understanding of Indigenous history results in a rich and complex understanding of this aspect of book history. At the same time, there are many ways to incorporate Indigenous methodologies and perspectives into our curatorial practices, which Kelly and his colleagues have attempted to do at Amherst.

This lecture is also available by Zoom livestream.