Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
Dr. J.J. Ghaddar is a Lebanese writer, archivist, historian, educator, and long-time community organizer. Currently, she is Assistant Professor at Dalhousie University’s Department of Information Science in Kjipuktuk, Miꞌkmaꞌki (homeland of the Mi'kmaq) also known as Halifax, Canada. She also serves as founding director of Dalhousie’s Archives & Digital Media Lab. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellowship working with Raymond Frogner (National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation) and Dr. Greg Bak (History Dept.) at the University of Manitoba, funded by Canada’s Social Science & Humanities Research Council. She has worked in archives and libraries around the world, including at the American University of Beirut’s Jafet Library on the personal papers of Dr. Constantine Zurayk who is credited with coining the term ‘Nakba’; and at the Nelson Mandela Foundation’s Centre of Memory in Johannesburg on the personal papers of the antiapartheid hero, Nelson Mandela. For over a decade, Ghaddar has lectured, researched, and published extensively on archival repatriation and decolonization in national and international arenas, from Algeria, France, Canada/Turtle Island and Palestine to UNESCO, the Non-Aligned Movement and International Council on Archives. These include publications on the settler colonial history of settler Canada’s state archives and the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. She has also brought to light a hidden history of the Third World Project, excavating the anticolonial ethos of the Vienna Convention on Succession to State Property, Archives and Debts (1983) with its radical vision of global archival repatriation and its grounding in the Algerian liberation movement. Her publications appear in Disputed archival heritage (2023, Routledge), In the Field (2023), Archival Science (2020; 2016), Library Quarterly (2017), and Archivaria (2016), among others. Ghaddar holds a PhD and Master of Information from the University of Toronto.
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Papers by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
https://barricadejournal.org/ramparts/76-years-later-a-documentary-nakba/
"In speaking of a 'documentary nakba'” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records . . ."
In the Field (blog of the Association of Canadian Archivists)
10 Jan 2023 9:30 AM
Thesis Chapters by Dr. Jamila J . Ghaddar
Part I, “‘Total archives’ for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada,” traces the settler colonial foundations of Canada’s state archives and archival profession in the era of Confederation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes connection between this history and the recent court cases between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Canadian government over archives and records. Part II, “‘that keening trajectory’: Nakba genealogies, archival representation and the Dr. Constantine Zurayk collection,” examines the politics of memorializing the Nakba and Arab anticolonial histories based on my experience archiving the collection at the American University of Beirut. It explores Zurayk’s theorizing of the 1948 Nakba (a term he is said to have coined) and the 1967 Naksa (Six Day War) in relation to Israeli archives and the Palestinian counter archive. Overall, I consider how a reconceptualized understanding of provenance in place can contribute to the decolonizing of archiving, archives and, therefore, of land and people in settler colonial contexts.
https://barricadejournal.org/ramparts/76-years-later-a-documentary-nakba/
"In speaking of a 'documentary nakba'” we are likewise speaking of the physical, social, political and cultural ills that accrue from a sustained campaign of theft and destruction by Israeli belligerents of records . . ."
In the Field (blog of the Association of Canadian Archivists)
10 Jan 2023 9:30 AM
Part I, “‘Total archives’ for land, law and sovereignty in settler Canada,” traces the settler colonial foundations of Canada’s state archives and archival profession in the era of Confederation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It makes connection between this history and the recent court cases between the Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the Canadian government over archives and records. Part II, “‘that keening trajectory’: Nakba genealogies, archival representation and the Dr. Constantine Zurayk collection,” examines the politics of memorializing the Nakba and Arab anticolonial histories based on my experience archiving the collection at the American University of Beirut. It explores Zurayk’s theorizing of the 1948 Nakba (a term he is said to have coined) and the 1967 Naksa (Six Day War) in relation to Israeli archives and the Palestinian counter archive. Overall, I consider how a reconceptualized understanding of provenance in place can contribute to the decolonizing of archiving, archives and, therefore, of land and people in settler colonial contexts.