REL 490.001
Capstone Senior Seminar
W | 3:30-5:50
PRH 210
Download Syllabus
In this senior capstone course for REL majors, we will be talking about the way scholars approach and deploy archival research. Specific questions within archive theory relevant to this class include: What kind of authority can an archive be said to have in scholarly renderings of the past? How do contemporary interventions like media studies and posthumanism complicate our understanding of archives as stable artifacts? Looking at archives as exercises in present-day curation rather than windows into history, we will discuss archives as sites of productive tension for social theorists invested in contextual specificity.
K. Merinda Simmons
- Office hours:
By appointment
- (205) 348-5271
- merinda.simmons@ua.edu

Readings
Kleinberg, Ethan
Haunting History: For a Deconstructive Approach to the Past (*recommended, not required)
Stanford UP, 2017
9781503603387
Online Readings
Blackboard Other texts will be available through the Blackboard course site.