Michelle Caswell

Michelle Caswell

SE&IS 214
300 North Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520

W: https://michellecaswell.org/

Curriculum Vitae

Michelle Caswell

Professor

Michelle Caswell, Ph.D., is a Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Caswell directs a team of students at UCLA’s Community Archives Lab, which explores the ways that independent, identity-based memory organizations document, shape, and provide access to the histories of minoritized communities with a particular emphasis on understanding their affective, political, and artistic impact. In 2008, together with Samip Mallick, Caswell co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository that documents and provides access to the stories of South Asian Americans. She is the author of the books, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (Routledge Press, 2021) and Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), as well as more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in critical archival studies.

Departments

Expertise

Research Centers

Titles and Positions

  • Professor, Department of Information Studies
  • Affiliated Faculty, Asian American Studies

Awards, Honors and Fellowships

  • 2020, Hugh A. Taylor Prize for best paper published in Archivaria, for Gracen Brilmyer, Joyce Gabiola, Jimmy Zavala, and Michelle Caswell, “Reciprocal Archival Imaginaries: The Shifting Boundaries of ‘Community’ in Community Archives,” Association of Canadian Archivists.
  • 2017, Winner, Fellows Ernst Posner Award for Best Paper Published in American Archivist, for Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez, “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives,” Society of American Archivists. $500 prize.
  • 2015, Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award for Best Publication, Society of American Archivists. For Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Agency and the Photographic Record in Cambodia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014).

Education

  • University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, WI.
    Ph.D., School of Library and Information Studies, May 2012.
  • University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI.
    Master of Library and Information Science, August 2008.
    Concentration: Archival Administration.
  • Harvard Divinity School of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
    Master of Theological Studies in World Religions (South Asia), June 1999.
  • Columbia College of Columbia University, New York, NY.
    Bachelors of Arts in Religion, May 1997.

Select Publications

  • Caswell, Michelle. Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work. (Routledge Press, January 2023.)
  • Caswell, Michelle. Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014.
  • Caswell, Michelle. “Dusting for Fingerprints: Introducing Feminist Standpoint Appraisal.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3:1 (2020), special issue on feminist ethics.
  • Caswell, Michelle, Joyce Gabiola, Gracen Brilmyer, Jimmy Zavala and Marika Cifor, “Imagining Transformative Spaces: The Personal-Political Sites of Community Archives,” Archival Science 18(1), 2018: 73-93.
  • Caswell, Michelle (with graphic design by Gracen Brilmyer). “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in the Archives Classroom.” Library Quarterly 87(3) (2017), special issue “Aftermath: Libraries and the U.S. Election”: 222-235.
  • Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79 (Spring/Summer 2016): 56-81. Winner, Fellows Ernst Posner Award, Society of American Archivists.
  • Caswell, Michelle and Marika Cifor. “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives.” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43.
  • Caswell, Michelle. “‘The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.” Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 16:1 (2016) (special issue “Archives on Fire”), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk.
  • Michelle Caswell, “Feeling Liberatory Memory Work: On the Archival Uses of Joy and Anger,” Archivaria 90 (Fall 2020), 148-164.
  • Caswell, Michelle, Ricardo Punzalan, and T-Kay Sangwand. “Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 2 (2017), http://libraryjuicepress.com/journals/index.php/jclis/article/view/50.

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