Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-23T13:19:08.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Novices in the Archives: Restoring, Preserving and Digitising an African Archive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Sue E. Houchins*
Affiliation:
Bates College, Lewiston, ME
Get access

Extract

In 2013, I traveled to the Khama III Memorial Museum in Serowe, Botswana, to deliver a paper at a conference honoring the fortieth anniversary of the publication of southern African author Bessie Head's celebrated novel A Question of Power. This was my first visit to the museum that houses the author's archives which contain most of her correspondence with literary agents, publishers, historians, anthropologists, literary critics, and other writers - including Alice Walker, Nikki Giovanni, Toni Morrison, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. They also include some of her original manuscripts, agricultural notes, and publishing contracts.

All the scholars who presented papers on this occasion, except for one, were Africanists who focused on the literatures of the Continent. The outlier who specialised in African American drama delivered a comparative study between Head's short fiction and works by Black Atlantic writers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © African Research & Documentation 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)