An effort at Duke I’m really proud of is the Archive for Human Rights, run by Patrick Stawski. We’re collecting the institutional papers of (primarily) US-based human rights groups. We;re also looking for private collections, like the one held by Coletta Youngers, for many years (and counting) a human rights advocate on the Andes, in particular Peru. The human rights movement has hit a generational mile post — we have a history and papers that need to be preserved for future study.
A recent conference in Mexico highlighted this. Patrick and I talked about the work we are doing at Duke. We were joined by Valerie Love, the human rights archivist at the University of Connecticut, and Christian Kelleher, the human rights archivist at the University of Texas-Austin.
We’re all approaching the issue from different directions, shaped by our particular universities and interests. I think that difference is a strength. At Duke, for example, our emphasis is on building relationships with the groups or individuals who place their papers in the university. One example is the WOLA-Duke Book prize, awarded this year to Guatemalan writer Francisco Goldman for The Art of Political Murder, about the murder of Archbishop Juan Gerardi. WOLA has its papers at Duke and we are looking for support to bring a WOLA researcher to Duke periodically to talk about the groups work (and get a little time at a major university).
At Texas, Christian has a fascinating project with the Rwandan Genocide Memorial. And Valerie is doing really interesting work at the Dodd Center at the University of Connecticut.
But rather than describe their interests, I’ll let them do it themselves. Here are recordings of the presentations in Mexico:
Patrick Stawski with Robin Kirk