The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

This session was streamed but not recorded

Curated Track: 

Description:

This panel builds on an emergent debate in historical and political geography concerned with situating and diversifying the history of internationalism. In doing so, we seek to challenge the terms on which ‘internationalism’ has been typically studied as an elite and institutional project. The archives of large international organisations, like the League of Nations, United Nations, or philanthropic bodies, offer only one lens on what internationalism was, where it happened, and to whom it mattered. Comparatively less attention has been given to more marginal, subaltern, counter-cultural or grassroots internationalist movements and their archives, as well as the broader ways in which internationalism was performed, felt and embodied in the past. We focus on projects of collecting, cataloguing, combining, digitising, and displaying as the modes through which archives accrue and gather meaning. Specifically, we seek to explore some of the following questions:

- How has archiving been mobilised in a diverse range of internationalist projects? How significant are archives for defining the terms on which international imaginaries are built?
- How have international archives been displaced, disputed or destroyed?
- Can we use traditional ‘international archives’ to tell other histories?
- Can everyday engagements with internationalism be understood through the circulation of ordinary objects, friendships, intimacy, embodied experience, and social connection?
- And what are the limitations of archives in making sense of internationalism? For instance, do alternative approaches to internationalism invite us to rethink the value of archival evidence?

Non-Presenting Participants