Archive Stories

“[T]he essays are thought-provoking. . . . [and] provide an entertaining read. . . . [T]hey spur the reader to think more abstractly about how their own experiences relate to the process of writing history. Indeed, the collection offers good fodder for discussions of historiography and historical method.” - Cathleen D. Cahill, Journal of Anthropological Research

“[T]he essays are thoughtful and nuanced, and a pleasure to read.” - Mark Allen Greene, Biography

“[T]he greatest strength of Archive Stories . . . [is] the stories themselves and what they tell us about the capacity of archival documents—however we choose to define them—to engage the human imagination in unpredictable and subversive ways. All of the stories are exercises in reading archives against the grain. What the narratives that unfold from the readings ultimately reveal are the myriad, complex, and contradictory versions of the past that are capable of being constructed from those archives.” - Heather MacNeil, Journal of Archival Organization

“[The book] is important for archivists to read essays such as we find in Archive Stories because they bring new life and provide new perspectives on the most fundamental questions challenging archivists today.” - Richard J. Cox, American Archivist

“Burton has performed a service to the fields she covers, but mainly to the grand goal that I believe
nearly everyone who engages in research is initially enamored of: the pursuit and expansion of knowledge. With this fine compilation of perspectives and ideas, connected throughout by threads of common and uncommon understanding, Burton enables us to increase our understanding of the nature of historical research.” - John B. Wolford, Oral History Review

“The readership of a book like this will remain confined to academia. . . and that is a shame. The themes meditated on here, and the desire to explicitly connect historical methodology with issues of public importance and debate, deserve not only the serious and well-considered professional discussion they are given in this anthology, but also a wider public airing.” - Eva-Maria Swidler, World History Connected

“These eighteen carefully selected essays elucidate both the personal and the political aspects of historians’ experiences working in archives around the world. . . . Archive Stories is highly recommended to any intelligent reader interested in history, and the ‘history of writing history.’” - Cilla Golas, JSNCA

“These insightful and engaging essays will be useful to anyone who works in archives, on either side of the desk. . . . Professors of library and information science will want to draw from this anthology for courses on archival management. . . . Upper-level history majors and first-year graduate students would benefit from a close reading of the entire volume.” - Elizabeth Bramm Dunn, Historical Methods

“Archive Stories is path-breaking in its subject matter, methodology, and up-to-date reflection on the status of historical knowledge. It is hard to see how anyone can avoid using this important anthology in methodology and historiography courses.” - Bonnie G. Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice

“Important and timely, this fascinating collection of tales from a multitude of repositories and record offices removes all sorts of archives from the historian’s grasp (though there are many extraordinary and brave historians writing here) and restores their meaning to politics and society, to the telling of individual and collective pasts.” - Carolyn Steedman, author of Dust: The Archive and Cultural History