FMST 031. Activating the Archive: Expanded Documentary and Performance

This production-oriented seminar approaches the archive as living material. Through documentary practice, editing, and live performance, students will activate historical collections and bring them into the present. Working directly with the audiovisual holdings of Swarthmore’s libraries, including the Swarthmore College Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library, students will explore the history of the peace movement and of the College itself.

Students will learn the full workflow of archival documentary production: locating and accessing collections, evaluating and handling audiovisual materials, digitization and editing, and navigating rights, licensing, and fair use. Alongside this hands-on work, we will study artists and filmmakers who use performative gestures around the archive, such as live cinema, reenactment, live narration, and expanded projection. We will ask how these practices can recover suppressed histories, question institutional memory, and make historical material newly public. We will also consider the ethical and political stakes of reuse and circulation, particularly when working with the records of activist movements and living communities.

The semester culminates in a collaboratively planned live documentary activation. This will be a public performance event built from students’ research and edits of archival material.
Humanities.
1 credit.
Eligible for ESCH.
Spring 2027. Turajlić.
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies

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