Historical research into traumatic events such as the Transatlantic slave trade, the lynching of African Americans in the southern US or the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas requires working with the archive. This inevitably means looking at sales records, court documents, photographs and other materials which function as proof of these events.

The archive is undeniably an important informational reservoir, the collective assortment of written records, testimonies, oral accounts and other historical traces. However, the conflicts and brutality of occurences documented in the archive entail that the traces of their history are themselves marked by violence. While the archive can function as evidence of injustice and atrocity, it can also repeat or replay such violence to a certain degree for those who have suffered from its original force.

This seminar engages with the double-edged nature of the archive, focusing on the legacy of colonialism, the tensions of positionality, the discomfort of speaking for the dead, and the demands for proof and for reparation.

This seminar is held in English, but the final term paper can be written in either German or English.