These Stories Must Be Told: Preliminary Observations by a Black Scholar Practitioner on Silences in the Archive

Abstract

As a scholar practitioner, a trained philosophical theologian, Methodist clergywoman, and social enterprise founder who is conducting oral histories as part of my doctoral internship in the IUPUI Arts and Humanities Institute, my scholarly lens and methodological skills are being defined as I interrogate the COVID-19 archive. In this article I attempt to offer some preliminary reflections on my oral history curation focused on how Black and brown artists and activists, primarily based in Indianapolis, IN, frame their lived experiences of death, dying, mourning, and bereavement in the wake of COVID-19 utilizing critical archival practices: those practices that take seriously the methods of critical race theory, critical gender theory, Womanist, mujerista, and feminist methodologies, to name a few. The COVID-19 archive is a collection of oral histories, stories and artifacts depicting the times in which we are living, through the lenses of storytellers grappling with the pandemics of systemic racism, COVID-19, distrust in government, and various relics representing the idea of the United States of America in 2020, as such, I conclude with a brief exploration of how art emerges as both an outlet for creators and a mode of illumination for consumers.