Faculty/Research Works
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Items included in this collection represent the diverse products generated by the academic and creative labor of UPRM's faculty members. These may include textual documents (research articles, books, book chapters, technical reports, etc.), conference presentations outside of UPRM, research posters, and other products such as maps, graphics, or computer code. To learn more about what works can be submitted to this collection, visit https://libguides.uprm.edu/repositorioUPRM/facultad
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Browsing Faculty/Research Works by Subject "Academic libraries"
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PublicationForging future access to memory: Library contributions to a multi-disciplinary oral history project( 2023-03-16) Morales Benítez, José J. ; Alvarez, Jaquelina E. ; Chansky, Ricia Anne ; University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez ; Academic Affairs ; College of Arts and Sciences - Art ; General Library ; Department of EnglishOver the last six years, Puerto Rico has been shaken by a surge of stratified disasters-multiple overlapping catastrophes that affect the population in different but interrelated ways. Unrelenting economic depression provoked the establishment of a fiscal control board appointed under the PROMESA Act, which led to the imposition of harsh austerity measures. In September 2017, hurricanes Irma and María struck, causing extreme devastation. Furthermore, late 2019 saw the onset of a swarm of earthquakes which generated widespread displacement and structural damage, and 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic. As recently as September 2022, Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico, causing extreme flooding and damages to an already weakened infrastructure and leaving thousands without power or running water for weeks. Our university has not been spared, as it has been subject to severe budget cuts causing the elimination of faculty positions and deterioration of infrastructure and services, with student precarity on the rise. In response to this scenario of stratified disasters, the university library, in tandem with the English Department and Film Program, have initiated a collaborative project involving the creation of an oral history laboratory (OHL). The OHL, which will be housed in the library, will be a space dedicated to the collection, preservation, and broad dissemination of oral histories from around the Puerto Rican archipelago, particularly those that capture the experiences of community members as they have navigated the many challenges of these difficult times. The creation of the OHL shows how academic libraries, especially those serving communities facing precarious circumstances, can forge alliances and design creative projects to address local events and produce unique primary source collections. The digital oral history collections generated by the OHL are a significant contribution to the historical record, as they augment the visibility of narratives and perspectives coming from sectors of the population whose voices have been historically underrepresented or silenced. In the context of overarching problems like climate change and economic precarity, this work has a potent social justice component, as it highlights the experiences of those who, due to deeply entrenched social inequities and government neglect, are forced to endure the most severe aspects of the recent wave of calamities that has battered the Puerto Rican archipelago. The methodology used in developing the OHL is fundamental to the work, as the narrative transactions conducted through oral history interviews contribute an intersectional lens that encourages approaches to historical study that are more informed by personal human experience, thus cultivating empathy and solidarity. Additionally, oral history practice has the ability to resituate those disempowered by tragedy through the act of storytelling, where the narrator is positioned as the agential protagonist, an act more and more relevant in the face of Puerto Rico’s ever-growing list of cultural traumas. This session will present the groundbreaking methodological approach employed for the creation of the OHL and its digital humanities collections, and presents an example of how libraries can develop strategic multidisciplinary alliances for projects that promote social justice and equity in their home communities.
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PublicationThe Oral History Lab @UPRM( 2023-10-21) Chansky, Ricia Anne ; Denesiuk, Marci ; Morales Benítez, José J. ; University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez ; College of Arts and Sciences - Art ; Academic Affairs ; Department of English ; General LibraryThis poster provides an introduction to the Oral History Lab of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, detailing its objectives and work.
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PublicationThe Oral History Lab @UPRM: Decolonial Practice On, Across, & Beyond Campus( 2023-10-20) Chansky, Ricia Anne ; Denesiuk, Marci ; Morales Benítez, José J. ; University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez ; College of Arts and Sciences - Art ; Academic Affairs ; Department of English ; General LibraryIn September 2017, Hurricane María made landfall in the Puerto Rican archipelago, triggering floods and mudslides, washing out roads, destroying homes, farms, and businesses, causing the largest blackout in US history, knocking out communications, leading to food, water, and gasoline shortages, and ultimately causing thousands of deaths. Just weeks after the hurricane, faculty at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez began a bilingual, mass-listening project that placed hundreds of undergraduate students in their home communities to record the stories that mattered most to them told by the people most important to them. Trained in antiracist and decolonial methodologies as well as trauma-informed approaches, students and faculty have recorded almost 500 oral histories to date that are focused on the stratified disasters of hurricanes, an ongoing earthquake swarm, COVID-19, a worsening economic crisis, and the complicated relationship between Puerto Rico and the US. The panel includes three presentations, each one dedicated respectively to: (1) The oral history courses that we have developed on the UPRM campus for undergraduate students, ones that serve as general education courses on a campus in which the majority of matriculated students self-identify as English as a second language speakers; (2) The training and mentorship program that we have developed for community partners across the Puerto Rican archipelago to support them through the development, archiving, and dissemination of their own oral history projects; and (3) The oral history digital archive @UPRM—and its bilingual metadata scheme—as both a means of teaching students and community partners how to reposition their perceptions of themselves as knowledge producers and a repository established to aid global research. The three presentations on this panel articulate some the ways in which multiple on-campus assets and off-campus community organizations can collaborate on oral history for social justice projects. Furthermore, these presentations theorize oral history as a decolonial pedagogical model that undermines traditional, counterproductive divisions between both academic discipline and on- and off-campus communities as they work to record, archive, and disseminate essential stories of climate disaster and community ingenuity.