Terra Cognita: Graduate Students in the Archives - A Retrospective on the CLIR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jake

Terra Cognita: Graduate Students in the Archives offers a retrospective on the CLIR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources, framing archival research as a distinctive, empirical yet highly constrained practice. It examines how scholars navigate subject selection, institutional context, provenance, and the challenge of maintaining objectivity while reading intimate materials. The volume synthesizes fellows’ final reports (2003–2015) and mentor reflections, highlighting recommendations to strengthen graduate training, build archival communities, and improve scholarly exchanges.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages66

Reading Time2 h 46 min

AccessFree to download

Foreword

The Analysis

Ongoing Challenges for Research Using Primary Sources: An Analysis of Mellon Dissertation Research Fellow Reports

Reflections of Program Mentors

The Discussion

Renegotiating the Archive: Scholarly Practice in a Digital Age

Reading the Materiality of the Archive

Afterword: This Vital Conversation

About the Authors

Terra Cognita: Graduate Students in the Archives A Retrospective on the CLIR Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources May 2016 CounCil on library and information resourCes ISBN 978-1-932326-55-0 CLIR Publication No. 170 Published by: Council on Library and Information Resources 1707 L Street NW, Suite 650 Washington, DC 20036 Website at [http://www.clir.org](http://www.clir.org) Copyright © 2016 by Council on Library and Information Resources. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Cover image: “Nova et accuratissima totius terrarum orbis tabula.” Joan Blaeu, 1596-1673. Courtesy Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division. Contents Foreword, by Nicole Ferraiolo ............................................ iv The Analysis .......................................................... 1 Ongoing Challenges for Research Using Primary Sources: An Analysis of Mellon Dissertation Research Fellow Reports, by Lori M. Jahnke and Amanda Watson ...................................... 2 Reflections of Program Mentors ........................................ 25 Not in This Alone: Toward an Interdisciplinary Community of Scholars and a Critical Archival Practice, by Elliott Shore .................. 26 Mentoring and the Challenge of the Humanities, by R. A. Kashanipour.................................................... 30 The Discussion ....................................................... 37 Renegotiating the Archive: Scholarly Practice in a Digital Age, by William G. Thomas III ................................................ 38 Reading the Materiality of the Archive, by Michael F. Suarez, S.J.............. 51 Afterword: This Vital Conversation, by Charles Henry ...................... 55 About the Authors..................................................... 59 Foreword Around AD 150, the cartographer Ptolemy penned his Geographia, an atlas of regional maps and collection of longitude and latitude values detailing the world as it was known to the Romans. Central to his work was a treatise on cartography that explained the collection and organization of his data and offered projections for what a truly global map of the world could be. By sharing his methodologies, Ptolemy contributed to a conversation with the cartographers before him and those over the millennia that followed. His methods provided tools for future generations to refine and challenge his projections, compare them with competing models, and invent new forms of the map itself. Every scholar engaged in original research can be thought of as a cartographer of sorts, contributing new knowledge and approaches to our collective ecumene or known world, our terra cognita. This volume reflects on a specific type of knowledge production: archival research by historians and humanists. Archival research is a unique and peculiar practice. It is empirical by nature, but lacks the control of variables that a study using the scientific method would employ. What can be made of observations when the subject material for your research has been selected, arranged, or discarded by others before you? The practice is also singular in its intimacy. How can one maintain objectivity after spending years reading someone’s diary, or reports that exist to express a particular perspective? Scholars in archives must read the sources held within while also reading against them. Their interpretations must extend beyond the documents to the context of collecting institutions themselves: their political, social, and economic realities. This is a context of nations, empire, administrators, and bureaucracy; one of collectors, enthusiasts, inheritors, and martyrs. It’s a story of library budgets, overzealous and absentminded employees, and shifting approaches to provenance. It’s about the countless sources and voices that have been lost to history. This volume

FAQs

What central questions does the volume raise about archival research?

The volume considers how archival research conditions and practices have changed over recent decades and what communities invested in cultural heritage and knowledge production can do to better support new scholarship in this evolving context.

How does the book analyze Mellon fellowship research?

Section 1 presents an assessment by Lori Jahnke and Amanda Watson based on fellows’ final reports submitted to CLIR between 2003 and 2015, synthesizing reflections on research conditions and archival training.

What recommendations does the volume make for supporting original source scholarship?

It highlights three targeted recommendations: improve graduate training, build communities around archives, and facilitate more robust exchanges among scholars about archival methods.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Jake