Dr. Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth will present preliminary and collaborative methodologies stemming from an archival partnership with community organizations serving Rendville, Ohio, one of the region's first racially integrated coal towns. Bringing together researchers from the Rendville Historical Preservation Society, Black in Appalachia, and the Ohio State University Center for Folklore Studies, the project is seeking to catalog and digitize approximately 2,000 items in the community-held Joseph T. Williams Collection. The Collection reflects one hundred years of history in the town as assembled by its former mayor, post master, barber, scribe, and friend to many, Joseph T. "Uncle Joe" Williams. From Black leadership in organizing labor struggles to intergenerational migration to the everyday "village life" of the town, the collections brings together diverse strands of social life.
The talk will take stock of applying collaborative ethnographic practices to archiving the thousands of letters, photographs, and documents in the collection, as well as how interpreting themes of race/racialization, gender and sexuality, labor, and governance emerge from the materials and the collaborations themselves.
