Material Memory

S1 E3: The Duty of Memory

December 19, 2019 Kathlin Smith Podcast 01:01:56 0 Comments

They thought they knew what had value. In 1980, soldiers stormed the headquarters of Radio Haiti, arrested its journalists, and stole or destroyed the equipment—not realizing that the station’s most powerful weapon was its audio archive, which was left neglected and damaged but intact.

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Watch Season One Trailer

Welcome to Season One of Material Memory, celebrating the UN-designated Year of Indigenous Languages. In each of six episodes, host Joy Banks speaks with people involved in the work of restoring audio and audiovisual recordings of indigenous languages and their sometimes Herculean efforts to make these recordings accessible to the communities they represent.

Latest Episodes

S1 E2: Connected to the Legacy

December 9, 2019 Kathlin Smith 00:55:33

In this episode of Material Memory, we talk to experts at the Amistad Research Center who are working to digitize the audio field recordings of African-American academic and linguist...

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S1 E1: The Ethics of Access

December 9, 2019 Kathlin Smith 00:46:56

How can recordings of indigenous languages be made accessible to the communities they represent? In this episode of Material Memory, we talk to experts about the ethical considerations and...

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Keeping Cultural Memory Alive: What is at Stake?

November 11, 2019 Kathlin Smith 00:21:34

What does it take to keep recorded memory alive for use by future generations? What are the threats to our cultural record, and what is at stake if it’s...