Description: These archives (or are they counter-archives?) are located in unexpected places--the doorways of Katrina homes, the cavity of a cow, the remnants of extinct animals, an Internet site--and they offer up "alternate modes of knowing" to the traditional archive.
Review Quotes:
"It was a pleasure to read through this collection, and I suspect some of the essays, if not the entire book, will find itself on the syllabus for my Archive and Ephemera graduate course."--Museum Anthropology Review
"An unruly--and much-needed--model for how to do the archive differently."--Scott Herring, author of The Hoarders: Material Deviance in Modern American Culture
"A finely wrought collection of curiosities, The Year's Work in the Oddball Archive presents a surprising and original contribution that stretches our understanding of what constitutes an archive and how to best make use of it. By playing with notions of collecting and cataloging, this anthology offers a range of investigations into detritus and forgotten ephemera, each of which resolutely resists straight-forward methodologies, remaining all the while serious and deeply engaged. A vital intervention into how we talk about the stuff that surrounds us."--Colin Dickey, co-editor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology