Featured Episode

Series one – part one & two
RELEASE DATE 7/18/2023

series one, part one

Executive Director Gabriel Solis

TOI traveled to Los Angeles to conduct two-series of podcasts. The first series features faculty and projects connected to UCLA’s Department of Information Studies. In part one of this series TOI connected with Dr Michelle Caswell who is a professor within IS and the Principal Investigator for the UCLA Community Archives Lab; a space dedicated to liberatory archive work through envisioning a society in which traces of the past are used to acknowledge, disrupt, end and repair historic and ongoing harm. The UCLA Community Archives takes on transformative research that reconceptualizes dominant Western archival studies alongside, in collaboration with, and in support of independent community archives. 

One of the independent community archives they work with is Texas After Violence Project; an organization that documents the voices, experiences, and perspectives of people directly impacted by violence in Texas. The Executive Director of the Texas After Violence Project, Gabriel Solís, and Michelle Caswell discuss the path led to their work, the significance of community archiving as well as the collaborative project between the UCLA Community Archive Lab and the Texas After Violence Project.  

series one, part two

In part two of this first TOI – N – LA series we connect with UCLA Department of Information Studies Assistant Professor and oral historian, Thuy Vo Dang. She is also Co-Director of the UCLA Community Archives Lab. Dr Vo Dang is a former Curator for the University of California, Irvine’s Southeast Asian Archive and inaugural director of Viet Stories: Vietnamese American Oral History Project. Thuy’s work centers voices on the margins of history. She is coauthor of A People’s Guide to Orange County (University of California Press, 2022) and Vietnamese in Orange County (Arcadia Publishing, 2015) and serves as a board member for Arts Orange County and the Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association. 

In this TOI episode, Thuy shares quite in depth critical cultural insights connected to collective memory and archival discourse, such as silencing of community voices, in particular the voice of refugee community members. Additionally the stimulating discussion includes perspective of insider-outsider dynamics regarding oral histories, aspects of collective memory connected to power, empowerment, and politics as well as gaining community trust for cultural memory projects through vulnerability.

Dr. Thuy Vo Dang

Upcoming

Release Date 8/22/2023

MEET THE CRTc EAST ATLANTIC COMMUNITY

The CRTc is an evolving as well as an expanding community. In an effort to reflect our international and regional efforts, the CRTc frames its work in Eastern Europe and Africa as the East Atlantic Region. In this episode, co hosted by CRTc’s Alice Corble and Tony Dunbar, we will meet the current East Atlantic Region community members and discuss their community engagements within the CRTc along with broader scope of each members professional and activist engagements.