Research
Allie Tsubota, film still from I am not sand, they told me (2023).
Methodology
In his foundational text Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot laid out his argument that historiography—the chronicling of past events into a narrative—is a result of decisions by the author, whose every choice is an opportunity for mediation and the official and unofficial exercise of power. In my work, I combine archival research, media theory, and social design to identify traces of authorship in the construction of history, which present an opportunity to intervene in that process.My current research focuses on photography as a technology, social object, and historical document because it combines those frameworks in one medium, which is also in dynamic flux: New technologies create and amplify disinformation campaigns, while the public has never had easier access to photographs via smartphones and the vast archive of the Internet. All the while, photography’s claim to verisimilitude is easily exploitable by those wishing to hand down the idea that history is sacrosanct.
Past projects
Since 2021, I have managed archival research into the history of the land at Forge Project as part of the organization’s obligation to support Indigenous placemaking within Mohican homelands. Unlike other areas of the United States where tribes have access to land bases, the Hudson Valley is a site of near total physical and narrative Indigenous erasure. This is emphasized in art movements like the Hudson River School (which imagined landscapes absent of Indigenous peoples) to the use of narrative past-tense when referring to peoples of place. The public is largely uninformed on this history, making non-Native claims to territory appear self-evident and unquestioned. Bringing these histories into the center of a contemporary public discourse can support more compelling arguments for return. This research is supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Humanities for All Times Initiative.
Topics of interest
Collective memory and public history, digital humanities, media theory and criticism, United States imperialism, Indigenous epistemology and anti-colonial methodologies, histories of settlement and land privatization, Black visuality and material culture, architectural preservation, social design, American society, monuments and memorials, cultural belongings and material redress, photography and social objects, historiography, museums, and archives