The House Archives Built: Dorothy Berry in Conversation with Savannah Wood
Come out to good neighbor for an evening with Dorothy Berry, one of the most vital voices in archival practice today, in conversation with Savannah Wood, for a celebration of Dorothy's book The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities (We Here Press, 2025). Dorothy has spent her career rethinking who gets to be remembered, how collections are built, and what it means to truly preserve the histories that institutions have long overlooked or outright ignored. This is a conversation about power, Black history, and labor.
ABOUT THIS EVENT
The $5 registration fee is not refundable, even if you are unable to attend after registering. There will be a cash bar with spirit-free drinks, wine and beer. This event will be photographed and the conversation will be audio recorded. Please read the terms of this event when registering.
ABOUT THE BOOK
As cultural heritage institutions across the nation grapple with the realization that their collecting histories have captured an incomplete picture of history, curators and archivists like Dorothy Berry have been drawn into complicated conversations. The House Archives Built and Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities brings together years of those conversations from their origins in conference halls, webinars, and reading rooms to open them up to the public. The labor and theory that upholds archives has been obscured, but our understandings of history and ourselves rest on those invisible foundations. This book clarifies those foundations while offering new possibilities for imagining archival futures in and outside of institutional holdings.
ABOUT DOROTHY
Dorothy Berry is an archivist and writer whose work can be found in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Public Domain Review, and Lapham’s Quarterly. Her writing is informed by archival methodologies from a range of cultural heritage institutions, where she continues to implement creative methods to make archival collections related to Black life available more broadly.
ABOUT SAVANNAH
Savannah Wood is an artist and the Executive Director of Afro Charities, Inc. Afro Charities stewards the archives of the 133-year-old AFRO American Newspapers — a business Savannah's great-great-grandparents founded in 1892. Since 2019, Wood has shepherded Afro Charities through a period of historic growth. In early 2027, the organization will open the Martha E. Murphy Research Institute in Baltimore — a public research center dedicated to the AFRO's extensive archives. Like four generations before her, Wood lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing and preserving Black histories.