Finding inspiration from recent calls to consider the body, affect, movement, and otherwise as/in archives, this article focuses on events that took place with young archivists engaged in the act of drawing at a community center. These data-stories are put in conversation with spatial theory, children’s geographies, and feminist new materialisms to make sense of child-created archives and to offer researchers a way to (un)learn archival methods by acknowledging artifacts, as not only reflecting the community of makers but also reflecting the vibrancy of materials and space as an archival reciprocity.
AdcockJ. (2016). The bedroom: A missing space within geographies of children and young people. In SkeltonT.NairnK.KraftlP. (Eds.), Space, play and environment: Vol. 3. Geographies of children and young people (pp. 401–420). Springer.
BennettJ. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.
4.
BoivinN.CohenMillerA. (2018). Breaking the “fourth wall” in qualitative research: Participant-led digital data construction. The Qualitative Report, 23(3), 581–592.
5.
CaswellM. (2014). Seeing yourself in history: Community archives and the fight against symbolic annihilation. The Public Historian, 36(4), 26–37.
6.
CornwallJ. M.ParkH. (2022). Leaking and containing: Researching with children and the sketchbook. Qualitative Inquiry, 28(8–9), 888–895.
7.
CvetkovichA. (2003). An archive of feelings: Trauma, sexuality, and lesbian public cultures. Duke University Press.
8.
DouglasJ.AlisauskasA.BassettE.DuranseaudN.LeeT.ManteyC. (2022). “These are not just pieces of paper”: Acknowledging grief and other emotions in pursuit of person-centered archives. Archives & Manuscripts, 50(1), 5–29.
9.
FoucaultM. (2010). The archeology of knowledge. Random House. (Original work published 1972)
10.
FranksM. (2009). Pockets of participation: Revisiting child-centered participation research. Children and Society, 25(1), 15–25.
11.
GiamminutiS.MerewetherJ.BlaiseM. (2022). Pedagogical documentation and the refusal of method: Troubling dogmas and inviting collective obligations. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 30(2), 213–226.
12.
HallS. (2001). Constituting an archive. Third Text, 15(54), 89–92.
13.
JonesS.ThielJ.BrownT.DavilaD.PittardE.SnowM.WoglomJ.ZhouX. (2016). Childhood geographies and spatial justice: Making sense of space and place-making as political acts in education. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 1126–1158.
14.
KaplanE. (2000). We are what we collect, we collect what we are: Archives and the construction of identity. American Archivist, 63, 126–151.
15.
KraftlP. (2020). After childhood: Re-thinking environment, materiality, and media in children’s lives. Routledge.
16.
KraftlP.HortonJ.TuckerF. (2012). Critical geographies of childhood and youth: Contemporary policy and practice. Policy Press.
17.
KueckerE.FreemanM. (2021). The aura of the trace in one child’s projects in the world: Collecting as rescue, repetition, rupture, and refrain. Journal of Childhood Studies, 46(4), 32–45.
18.
KumbierA. (2014). Ephemeral material: Queering the archive. Litwin Books.
19.
MarstonK. (2019). Researching LGBT+ youth intimacies and social media: The strengths and limitations of participant-led visual methods. Qualitative Inquiry, 25(3), 278–288.
20.
MasseyD. (2005). For space. SAGE.
21.
Pacini-KetchabawV.NxumaloF.KocherL.ElliottE.SanchezA. (2015). Journeys: Reconceptualizing early childhood practices through pedagogical narration. University of Toronto Press.
22.
SaurM. (1984). Dictionary of archival terminology (WalneP., Ed.). The International Council on Archives.
23.
SinghJ. (2018). No archive will restore you. Punctum Books.
24.
SobelD. (1990). A place in the world: Adults’ memories of childhood’s special places. Children’s Environments Quarterly, 7(4), 5–12.
25.
SobelD. (1993). Children’s special places: Exploring the role of forts, dens, and bush houses in middle childhood. Wayne State University Press.
SojaE. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. Verso Books.
28.
SpringgayS.TrumanA.McLeanS. (2020). Socially engaged art, experimental pedagogies, and anarchiving as research-creation. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 897–907.
29.
SpyrouS. (2017). Time to decenter childhood?Childhood, 24(4), 433–437.
30.
ThielJ. (2015a). Shrinking in, spilling out, and living through: Affective energy as multimodal literacies. In JohnsonL.EnriquezG.KontovourkiS.MallozziC. (Eds.), Literacies and the body: Theories and research on teaching, learning, and embodiment (pp. 90–104). Routledge.
31.
ThielJ. (2015b). Vibrant matter: The intra-active role of objects in the construction of young children’s literacies. Literacy Research: Theory, Method and Practice, 64, 112–131.
32.
ThielJ. (2020). Red circles, embodied literacies, and neoliberalism: The art of noticing an unruly placemaking event. Journal of Early Childhood Literacies, 20(1), 69–89.
33.
ThielJ. (2022). Twitter, #PreKWeek, and neoliberal childhoods: Posthuman reimaginings of a sigh. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 23(3), 317–331.
34.
ThielJ. (2023). (De/re)territorializing writing/composition: Becoming with playful objects through maker literacies: English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 22(2), 150–162.
35.
ThielJ.DernikosB. (2020). Refusals, re-turns, and retheorizations of affective literacies: A thrice-told tale. Journal of Literacy Research, 52(4), 482–506.
36.
ThielJ.JonesS. (2017). The literacies of things: Reconfiguring the material-discursive production of race and class in an informal learning center. Journal of Early Childhood Literacies, 17(3), 315–335.
37.
ThomasN. (2019). What is the point of studying childhood as a social phenomenon?Children and Society, 33(5), 324–332.
38.
WohlwendK.ThielJ. (2019). Cutting out, cutting with: A materialist reframing of action and multimodality in children’s play and making. In RowsellJ.KucirkovaN.FalloonG. (Eds.), Handbook of literacies and technology in early childhood (pp. 170–181). Routledge.
39.
YoonH. S.TempletonT. N. (2019). The practice of listening to children: The challenges of hearing children out in an adult-regulated world. Harvard Educational Review, 89(1), 55–84.
40.
ZapataA.KubyC.ThielJ. (2018). Encounters with writing: Becoming-with posthuman ethics. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(4), 478–501.
