Migrating memories: transdisciplinary pedagogical approaches to teaching about diasporic memory, identity and human rights in archival studies

Despite a growing focus on human rights issues within the field of archival studies, education designed to prepare students to be practicing archivists, scholars and educators has rarely considered how best to address these considerations as they relate to the tens of millions of individuals and communities who have experienced or who are descendants of forced diaspora. This paper reflects on the genesis, development, implementation and emergent themes of an experimental transdisciplinary course, Migrating Memories: Diaspora, Archives and Human Rights, designed to address this educational gap in archival education. In addition to relevant scholarly work, the course integrated fiction, creative non-fiction and film in order to exercise issues of memory, documentation and archiving relating to forced diaspora. This enabled the subject to be approached in the spirit of research in contemporary cultural anthropology as well as archival studies that is addressing the human dimensions and dynamics of memory and identity, in particular those that are cultural, affective and generational.