CARE: Collective for Archival Research of Embodiment

Yiming Ma
East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies
UC Santa Barbara

The Collective for Archival Research of Embodiment (CARE) is a research group and platform for interdisciplinary collaboration on archival theories and community archiving practices, with a focus on rescuing embodied experience against the cultural, political, and institutional acts of archival violence that censor and erase minority and subaltern voices. Represented by UC Berkeley (East Asian Languages + Cultures), UC Davis (Comparative Literature), UC Irvine (Political Science), UC Los Angeles (Asian Languages and Cultures), and UC Santa Barbara (East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, Film & Media Studies, Music, Religious Studies), CARE creates a network that engages public communities by promoting critical archival consciousness and fostering feminist, decolonial, anti-racist, and queer care of embodied experience through liberatory archiving practices. CARE organizes three clusters: “Mnemonic Bodies,” “Living Bodies,” and “Glitch Bodies.” Each cluster includes multifaceted events: 1) reading groups on critical literature regarding archives, 2) public digital archiving workshops, and 3) invited talks by unconventional archival practitioners. Our collaborative products include content creation and curation on our archiving site and an awareness-raising performance in Santa Barbara on archiving as an embodied experience.