Tonia Sutherland is an American archivist and educator with an expertise in Black archival studies. She conducts research on critical archival studies, digital studies, and science and technology studies. Sutherland earned a master's degree in library and information science in 2005 and a doctorate in 2014 from the University of Pittsburgh. [1] [2] She holds a Bachelor of Arts in history, performance studies, and cultural studies from Hampshire College.
Sutherland is the child of two Caribbean immigrants and grew up in Pennsylvania. She identifies as queer and is a first-generation college graduate. [1]
Her published books include Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife, published by the University of California Press in October 2023. [3]
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The afterlife or life after death is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's stream of consciousness or identity continues to exist after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit, which carries with it one's personal identity.
Resurrection or anastasis is the concept of coming back to life after death. Reincarnation is a similar process hypothesized by other religions involving the same person or deity returning to another body. The disappearance of a body is another similar but distinct belief in some religions.
An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located.
An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist can consist of a variety of forms, including letters, diaries, logs, other personal documents, government documents, sound or picture recordings, digital files, or other physical objects.
An information professional or information specialist is someone who collects, records, organises, stores, preserves, retrieves, and disseminates printed or digital information. The service delivered to the client is known as an information service.
Archival science, or archival studies, is the study and theory of building and curating archives, which are collections of documents, recordings, photographs and various other materials in physical or digital formats.
Joseph Auguste Anténor Firmin, better known as Anténor Firmin, was a Haitian barrister and philosopher, pioneering anthropologist, journalist, and politician. Firmin is best known for his book De l'égalité des races humaines, which was published in 1885 as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's work Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines. Gobineau's book asserted the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of Blacks and other people of color. Firmin's book argued the opposite, that "all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form. The races are equal". He was marginalized at the time for his beliefs that all human races were equal.
Barbara T. Christian was an American author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Among several books, and more than 100 published articles, Christian was best known for the 1980 study Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition.
Alondra Nelson is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. Since March 2023, she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In October 2023, she was nominated by the Biden-Harris Administration and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.
African American Californians or Black Californians are residents of the state of California who are of African ancestry. According to 2019 United States Census Bureau estimates, those identified solely as African American or Black constituted 5.8% or 2,282,144 residents in California. Including an additional 1.2% who identified as having partial African ancestry, the figure was 7.0%. As of 2021, California has the largest multiracial African American population by number in the United States. African Americans are the fourth largest ethnic group in California after Hispanics, Whites, and Asians. Asians outnumbered African Americans in the 1980s.
Library Genesis (LibGen) is a shadow library project for file-sharing access to scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, audiobooks, and magazines. The site enables free access to content that is otherwise paywalled or not digitized elsewhere. LibGen describes itself as a "links aggregator", providing a searchable database of items "collected from publicly available public Internet resources" as well as files uploaded "from users".
Community archives are archives created or accumulated, described, and/or preserved by individuals and community groups who desire to document their cultural heritage based on shared experiences, interests, and/or identities, sometimes without the traditional intervention of formally trained archivists, historians, and librarians. Instead, the engaged community members determine the scope and contents of the community archive, often with a focus on a significant shared event, such as the Ferguson unrest (2014). Community archives are created in response to needs defined by the members of a community, who may also exert control over how materials are used.
Augusta Lynn Bolles is an American anthropologist, professor Emerita of women's studies and affiliate faculty in anthropology, African American studies, American studies, comparative literature and the Latin American studies center at the University of Maryland, and co-chair of The Cottagers' African American Cultural Festival.
Safiya Umoja Noble is the David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor of Gender Studies, African American Studies, and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the director of the UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice and co-director of the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power at the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). She serves as interim director of the UCLA DataX Initiative, leading work in critical data studies.
Michèle V. Cloonan is an American library and information science educator. She is a professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, in Boston, Massachusetts, and Dean Emerita of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons. She is an advocate for the preservation of cultural heritage.
Michelle Caswell is an American archivist and academic known for her work regarding community archives and approaches to archival practice rooted in anti-racism and anti-oppression. She is an associate professor of archival studies in the Department of Information Studies at University of California, Los Angeles and is the director of the school's Community Archives Lab.
Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty is an American librarian and administrator. An archives and special collections expert, Evangelestia-Dougherty was the executive director of the Chicago-based Black Metropolis Research Consortium from 2011 to 2013 and the director of collections and services at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2013 to 2015. She became the first director of the combined Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, the world's largest museum library system, December 6, 2021. As of October 2024, Liza Kirwin is the Interim Director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, and Evangelestia-Dougherty was announced for the short list for the librarian position at California State University, San Marcos
Ricardo L. Punzalan is a Filipino American archivist who is an Associate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan School of Information. He has shaped the fields of archival science, virtual reunification, repatriation, reparative description, and has studied the nature of collections in both museums and archives. He holds undergraduate and Masters degrees from the University of the Philippines and a doctorate in information science from the University of Michigan.
Marika Cifor is an American archivist and feminist academic known for her work in archival science, library science, and digital studies. Her research focuses on community archives, HIV/AIDS, affect theory, and approaches to archival practice rooted in social justice. She is an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School. She also holds an adjunct faculty appointment in UW's Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies department.
A People's Archive of Police Violence in Cleveland is a local community created digital archive created in 2015 in response to the Killing of Tamir Rice. The archive documents community experiences not expressed in news, government, and police narratives. The archive uses the Omeka platform for community members to submit their stories.:158