Cluster Conversation: (Re)Writing our Histories, (Re)Building Feminist Worlds: Working Toward Hope in the Archives: Introduction

[Introduction] "Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. [...] Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency." - Rebecca Solnit In 2018, Cheryl Glenn wrote, "The work of feminist rhetorical historiography is far from done; in fact, it has just begun-and it is anchored in hope." Following Glenn, we explore hope in this cluster as a methodological imperative in the archives. Informed by theorists Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Rebecca Solnit, and Cornel West, the writers in this Cluster Conversation envision hope as a radical orientation toward building new worlds and a willingness to do the work to make those worlds possible. Following the models of Jacqueline Jones Royster, Charles Morris, Terese Guinsatao Monberg, and others, we see archives and archival methods as a particularly valuable part of doing such work. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues in Decolonizing Methodologies, "To hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges. The pedagogical implication of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis of alternative ways of doing things" (36). Archives and archival methods are vital to creating such alternative histories and knowledges.