What are alternative ways of engaging with the archive and how do these different framings help us understand archival material differently? If, as Mbembe argues, the institutional archive is a tool for colonial power, then how can we move outside these archival frames?

Ann Stoler, in her work "Colonial Archives and the Art of Governance," shifts our focus from archives as things to archiving as a process. That is, beyond thinking through what is or isn't being archived, Stoler's work challenges us to interrogate how we archive - from what form the archive takes to its systems of classification, these processes are what give meaning to otherwise disparate objects. How, then, can we read against the archival grain and reject both the narratives and structures that the colonial archive purports?

This section explores these questions through the use of digital humanities tools - from mapping to timelines, these alternative visualizations provide us with different modes of seeing and understanding the archive. While all of these framings present the same information, they yield different experiences that we encourage you to be attentive to as you engage. What new meanings are uncovered through each of these different framings?