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- Convenors:
-
Marija Dalbello
(Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
James Deutsch (Smithsonian Institution)
Ieva Weaver (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
The panel focuses on the legibility/illegibility of texts, images, sound, and performative media inscribing typologies and stereotypes of minorities. We encourage interpretations of how these media's competing reflections of care and violation represented the experiences of marginalized individuals.
Long Abstract:
We seek contributions that explore a wide range of representations, typologies, and reflective surfaces of care and violation arising from acts of inscription that have translated the experiences and recorded the lives of marginalized individuals. Our focus is on the pre-WWII era period in which middle-class individuals—including social photographers and journalists, philanthropists, academics, and professionals—documented the experiences of autodidacts, illiterates, insurgents, laborers, radicals, migrants, and vagrants. Through their descriptive skills and sometimes 'ventriloquized' narratives, they captured and symbolized the presence of marginalized people and conveyed their subjectivities, often through typologies and stereotypes. In so doing, their multimedia inscriptions were able not only to unwrite the class(es) of those they recorded, but also to tie their own writing efforts to progressive or charitable action. Thus, they made ostensibly unsafe outsiders more visible, legible, and palatable to the public for charity and curiosity in some instances, and for violation and surveillance of proletarians, minorities, and immigrants in other instances. Just like the mirror that cannot but reflect, these inscriptions are surfaces of both caring and injury. When read along the grain, the historiographic potential demonstrates unwriting as preservation. But when going against the grain, unwriting becomes an inversive act of reorienting authority and power. We welcome panel contributions that focus on communities or on individuals crossing and passing class. We seek detailed analyses through visual, textual, or historical studies and/or artistic projects in the sites of migration, radicalism, and bohemianism that address inscription, transmission, and unwriting.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
This paper relates to literary attempts to revive the memory of Jewish folklorists in Poland in the interwar period. Special attention will be given to the identity and ambivalent social reception of representatives of the mentioned ethnic minority frequently facing marginalisation and violence.
Paper Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to analyse the identity and social reception of the collectors of Jewish folklore and members of the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists in Poland in the interwar period, namely Menachem Kipnis and Hersh Danilevich. As Polish Jews and migrants, they occupied a unique sociological and cultural position, existing within the framework of the opposition between "the familiar" and "the foreign”. Kipnis and Danilevich did not assimilate with the Polish population; instead, they published their works in Yiddish, remaining committed to their cultural traditions. They became double outsiders – alienated from both Poles and assimilated Jews who distanced themselves from their roots and attained higher social standing by currying favour with prominent figures in Polish and German society. History turned out to be ruthless to both of them: they died in the Warsaw ghetto, and significant part of the ethnographic materials they collected did not survive the war.
The primary sources for this study will be the memories and works of writers, chroniclers, and historians Zusman Segalovich, Chaim Kaplan, Emanuel Ringelblum and Itzhak Katzenelson – acquaintances of Kipnis and Danilevich and witnesses of the events. The titular issue will be presented in a historical and social context, considering the realities of Poland during that era, including the rise of anti-Semitism, the legal status of the Jewish minority, and the attitudes of local communities towards it to show the complex relations focused around the Polish-Jewish ethnocultural borderland, which constitutes a difficult chapter of common history.
Paper Short Abstract:
The study explores the life cycle of Roma photographs from pre-WWII Latvia stored in public archives, from their creation and archival curating to their uses in various publications. In the context of the unwritten history of Latvian Roma, this is an attempt at a coherent reading of archival images.
Paper Abstract:
So far, around two hundred pre-WWII photos capturing Roma have been identified in the public Latvian archives and museums. The identification process and the creation and uses of these photos raise questions about how the place of Roma in Latvian history has been written and what the grounds for it are. Systematic archiving of Latvian Roma activities and culture has been almost nonexistent in Latvia, and Roma have only exceptionally taken part in the archival curating and interpretation process. In the context of the unwritten history of Latvian Roma, this is an attempt at coherent reading of archival images with the participation of Roma and archivists. The study considers the life cycle of archival photos, starting from analysis of the situations of taken pictures, their broader documentation context, and the agendas and choices made by the photographers. The archival literacy of archivists and explorers of the archives is analyzed, looking at their approaches of placing an underrepresented social group in broader contexts of archival structure and research narratives. The archival Roma photos have been used to illustrate such points as Roma equality and civic participation or their stereotypical place in society as costumed musicians or criminal suspects. Roma have been imagined as essentialized “ethnic types” or unnamed members of local communities and events. The study includes meanings that contemporary Roma assign to their historical depictions, such as dignity, improved living conditions, or religious rootedness.
Paper Short Abstract:
In the presentation we emphasise the social and cultural history of photography in interwar Croatia. Using the photography authored by two prominent middle-class intellectuals, we examine and illustrate their presentation of various marginalized social groups: the first perspective is of a university professor of ethnology and an amateur photographer (M. Gavazzi), while the second reflects the perspective of a professional art photographer (T. Dabac). The focus of our examination will be the way in which Gavazzi and Dabac have conceptualized and visually documented otherness in an interwar period.
Paper Abstract:
The social history of the interwar period in Croatia is still an area that has not been extensively examined. Although turbulent political history often comes to the fore, this period was characterised by certain social, cultural, and technological developments. In this presentation, we emphasize the social and cultural history of photography which became accessible to the middle-class in the interwar period; the cameras were used to visually document various aspects of everyday life. We focus on the (re)presentation of marginalized social groups using the example of photographs of two prominent representatives of the middle-class-intellectuals in Croatia. The first perspective is of a university professor of ethnology and an amateur photographer, Milovan Gavazzi (1895-1992), while the second one is of a professional art photographer, Tošo Dabac (1907-1970). Their interest in marginalized social groups slightly differs: Dabac emphasized the urban layer (e.g. economically deprived in the city), while Gavazzi, as an ethnologist, included rural marginalized individuals and groups. On the other hand, Gavazzi and Dabac are compatible not only by photography as a medium but also by the fact that they were culturally and politically displayed individuals in the Croatian interwar period. In the presentation, we contextualize their biographies and their expertise, in relation to the development of an interwar photography in a specific social, political, and economic scenery: how individuals and groups are visually depicted, etc. Nonetheless, can these ethnological and art photographs, as a specific visual medium, be (re)valorised as a vital research resource of contemporary ethnology and cultural anthropology?
Paper Short Abstract:
In a series of books published between 1902 and 1910, investigative journalist Hutchins Hapgood assembled a literary library of social types. His portrayals of marginalized individuals were written in the first and third person, merging subjectivities of self and others to address a tension of violation and care inherent in Progressive era reforms.
Paper Abstract:
Social photography and investigative writing created reflective surfaces for making the experiences of the laboring classes and recent immigrants in the United States broadly visible. Marginalized individuals and groups were studied in their places of living and labor. The method of documenting and exposing their lifeworld through empirical facts and research was needed for social reform and epitomized the moral philosophy of Progressive era reformers. Ghost images of marginalized individuals created the threshold that helped imagine the working classes outside their instrumental use in the labor force and mediated their observers' subjectivity. They were reduced to types that could be elevated to the ethical realm in which "sharing suffering" was possible (after Donna Haraway's When Species Meet, 2007). Hutchins Hapgood, whose investigative journalism was rooted in Progressivist methods of studying society includes autobiographical and proto-ethnographic works, Autobiography of a Thief (1903), An Anarchist Woman (1909), The Spirit of the Ghetto (1902) and Types from City Streets (1910). These writings portrayed the psychic life and motivations of an ex-pickpocket and burglar, an anarchist woman; and revealed social protagonists who assessed philanthropic efforts critically, offering a double exposure. He also captured the "life's little misfits" (1910) and the "ghetto" inhabitants (1902) of New York City. I am interested in how the merging of subjectivities, accomplished through first-hand accounts and autobiographies built from observations, conversations, and letter-writing, organized the margin that allowed crossing worlds and created a place of social encounter for sharing experiences of middle- and working-class individuals.
Paper Short Abstract:
Nels Anderson’s 1923 master’s thesis was a pathbreaking publication about the unhoused that reflects new ethnographic methods and illustrates both care and violation. Unwriting Anderson helps us better understand the experiences and lives of those whose lack of a fixed address have marginalized them.
Paper Abstract:
Among the most marginalized of individuals throughout the world are those who lack permanent homes. In many languages, the words to describe them are negative literally in the sense of pointing to a lack: homeless or unhoused, sans domicile fixe or sans abri, sin hogar, obdachlos, daaklos, beskućnici, bezpajumtnieki, бездомный, and many more.
One of the first scholars to closely study members of this group was Nels Anderson (1889–1986), the son of Swedish Americans, who left his parents’ home as a teenager to travel the country as a hobo. After serving in the US Army during World War I, Anderson graduated from Brigham Young University in his early thirties. He then studied sociology at the University of Chicago, where his 1923 master’s thesis, The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man, became a pathbreaking publication about the unhoused, reflecting new ethnographic methods of participatory observation.
Because Anderson remains little known today, this paper proposes to explore Anderson’s scholarship as examples of both care and violation of the unhoused. On one hand, Anderson could be extremely sympathetic: writing how “absolute democracy reigns” in their outdoor camps and how many are victims of “economic forces in modern industrial society.” However, Anderson also excoriated others, particularly those who were “wholly or partially dependent,” as “the most pitiable and the most repulsive types of the down-and-outs.” Unwriting Anderson helps us to better understand the experiences and lives of groups of individuals who have been marginalized because they lack a fixed address.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper examines the "superfluous person" in pre-WWII media, exploring how inscriptions made marginalized individuals legible yet erased complexity. These portrayals balanced empathy and control, revealing tensions in class boundaries and marginality through care and violation.
Paper Abstract:
This paper examines the figure of the "superfluous person" as a lens to explore how pre-WWII media—textual, visual, and performative—inscribed and unwrote marginality. Associated with Russian literature, the term "superfluous people" referred to those deemed unnecessary to societal functioning due to their dislocation from traditional structures of labor, community, and identity. Migrants, vagrants, and radicals were often framed as "superfluous" in middle-class narratives of the era, represented through journalism, social photography, and other media. These portrayals alternated between humanizing and dehumanizing, offering typologies that ranged from pitiable figures deserving care to dangerous outsiders requiring control.
This paper explores how such individuals were made legible to middle-class audiences through conflicting surfaces of care and violation. Social photographers like Jacob Riis evoked empathy and mobilized charity but often reinscribed stereotypes they sought to critique. Similarly, journalists ventriloquized the voices of vagrants and migrants, framing them as moral exemplars or cautionary tales. By analyzing these mediated representations, the paper investigates how the superfluous person was simultaneously preserved and erased, rendered visible for philanthropy or surveillance.
This study contributes to the panel's exploration of inscription and unwriting by showing how the superfluous person served as a reflective and refractive surface in pre-WWII media. Through close readings of specific examples, it examines how these acts of inscription navigated tensions between care and control, preservation and violation, shedding light on how marginalized individuals redefined class boundaries while confined by limiting typologies.