i love all of this!

My hope is that my book not only offers insight into the history of Obeah – an Afro-Caribbean religion that was criminalized in 1760 – but also into the problem of the archive, and how historians can use different strategies to tell new histories with the archives we have inherited.

An archival irruption is a "rupture in the narrative field an archival source that creates an opportunity to write an alternative narration about the past."

For those who want the full explanation, you can watch the virtual launch here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pbo...

After years of working with many archives, and studying different approaches to the archive, I came to realize that there were always ruptures in colonial narratives – moments of disjuncture that offered an opportunity to tell a different story. So that’s what an “archival irruption” is.

I coined the phrase “archival irruption” to offer a new metaphor for interpreting historical sources. My research uses colonial and missionary archives, but I wanted to tell stories that had been marginalized – about enslaved and colonized people, rather than those who produced the archives.

Thanks, Betsy! Yes there will be more. Also I think this one will be recorded

lol thank you!

thanks so much, Sarah!

Thanks so much Jason!!

Also, what he writes about the humanities is SO IMPORTANT TO HEAR!

"The true value of a liberal arts education is not learning a collection of facts, but learning how to learn."

Thank you David.

www.startribune.com/david-m-perr...

If you're planning to teach it, there's an Open Access version so students can get a free e-copy. My goal was for this book to be both teachable AND accessible.

Also: I'm happy to zoom in & answer questions from students if you assign it - just message me!

read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3...

At just 145 pages, Archival Irruptions is intended to be a short, teachable book and I designed it with Historical/Archival Methods and Religious Studies courses in mind. My hope is that it can help students work ethically, creatively, and rigorously with colonial archives to tell new histories.

The result is a book about historical methods, ethics, and storytelling. Each chapter focuses on a different type of archival source and reads them for “irruptions” – ruptures in the colonial narrative that allow us to tell a new history that has otherwise been silenced.

Archival Irruptions tells a new history of Obeah, an Afro-Caribbean religion that was criminalized in 1760 after the largest slave revolt in the 18th century British Empire. Using previously unexamined German Moravian sources, I examine the meaning of Obeah BEFORE it became a crime.

Thanks so much, Calvin!