The Givens-Theus Archive: Collection Management, Memory, and Narrative

Using personal narrative through family photographs and ephemera, this thesis will analyze the process of creating a family archive, collection care, and genealogy. This paper focuses on over 400 photographs and pieces of ephemera from the Givens-Theus Archive I created. I rehomed, digitized, and cataloged these items while collecting family stories to understand this material within and outside the national narrative. I will argue that a radical reading of my family’s every day or quotidian material history achieves futurity outside of the institution of the museum. The ability to research, examine, and archive material culture should not be limited to institutions like the museum, which often removes the context and affect necessary to understanding individual history and archiving material. I utilized the methods of oral history and critical fabulation and the methodologies of Black feminist museology and memory activism for this project.