Lightning Talk
Amy Ratelle
Project Manager for The Yellow Nineties Online
Co- Investigator at Ryerson University’s Children’s Literature Archive
Biography
Amy Ratelle is currently the Project Manager for The Yellow Nineties Online, as well as a Co- Investigator at Ryerson University’s Children’s Literature Archive. She has degrees in Film Studies from Ryerson University (BFA), and Carleton University (MA). She recently completed her PhD in Communication and Culture, a joint programme between Ryerson University and York University.
Abstract
In Archive Fever, Derrida contends that the archive’s “technical structure [...] also determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event” (17). For Derrida, then, the archive becomes an authoritative project. The digital archive thus borrows from the authority invested in the structuring of memory. Archiving and forming accessible online text repositories underpin work in the digital humanities; but as a film studies researcher, particularly dealing with animation studies, many online resources and archives are designed and maintained by non-academics, who are often as detailed as any peer-review editorial board. Henry Jenkins defends these acts of participatory culture by fans as a means by which to extend their engagement with their chosen narrative (Textual Poachers 73). Sites such as Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Database are excellent aggregators of catalogue titles, but provide little in the way of supplementary contextual materials.
Arising from questions generated by my research on animated films, this paper proposes to examine the possibilities and limitations of a digital humanities approach to film studies, an area as yet underrepresented by current research by DH practitioners. Taking the conflict between a Derridean concept of the archive as an authority and Jenkin’s espousal of the merits of fan participation, I hope to demonstrate that it is possible to leverage the philosophy behind open access into a means by which the fan-maintained archive or repository can, by necessity, achieve a form of cultural legitimacy.