Mario H. Ramirez, Candidate for Council

Mario H. Ramirez

CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

“My interest in joining the SAA Council is to press the organization even further toward a rigorous analysis of its commitments to diversity and inclusion, and to help engender significant shifts in how its policies and programs address structural forms of inequity.”

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Data Curation for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Digital Collection Services, Herman B. Wells Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, 2018–present.
• Affiliated Researcher, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS), Indiana University, Bloomington, 2018–present.
• Project Archivist, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2012–2013.
• Project Archivist, Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY), 2003–2011.

EDUCATION

• PhD, Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.
• MS, Library and Information Science, Long Island University, CW Post.
• MA, Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley.
• BA, American Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz.
• Archives Leadership Institute, 2011 Cohort.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Society of American Archivists: Cultural Heritage Working Group; Manuscript Repositories Section, Steering Committee; International Archival Affairs Roundtable, Steering Committee; Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, Co-Chair.                             
• Other: Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan, New York, Inc., Education Committee; Archival Education and Research Institute, Grand Challenges Working Group; Archivists Without Borders, U.S. Chapter, Steering Committee; Displaced Archives Project, Co-Chair; International Journal of Information Diversity & Inclusion, Editorial Board Member.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS

• “On 'Monstrous' Subjects and Human Rights Documentation,” in Emerging Trends in Archival Science (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017).
• “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing': Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives,” co-authored with Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, American Archivist 79, no. 1 (2016): 56–81.
• “The Social Justice Collaboratorium: Illuminating Research Pathways between Social Justice and Library and Information Studies,” co-authored with Rashauna Brannon, LaVerne Gray, Miraida Morales, Myrna Morales, and Elnora Tayag, in Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016).
• “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative," American Archivist 78, no. 2 (2015): 339–356.
• “Witness to Brutality: Documenting Torture and Truth in Post-Civil War El Salvador,” Archives without Borders/Archivos sin Fronteras, Archiefkunde 12 (2012). 
• “The Task of the Latino/a Archivist: On Archiving Identity and Community,” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 5, no. 1 (2009). 
• Ernst Posner Award, Society of American Archivists, 2017. 
• Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship, American Library Association, 2013.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

• “Teaching through Violence: Digital Pedagogies and Representations of Atrocity,” Digital Library Federation Forum (2018).
• “Visualizing Struggle, Conflict and Indigeneity: Building and Preserving the Archivo Mesoamericano,” Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) Annual Conference (2018).
• “Monsters’ in Our Midst: Pandilleros and the Limits of Human Rights in El Salvador,” Simmons University (2017).
• “Being Assumed Not to Be: A Critique of Whiteness as an Archival Imperative,” Special Collections and Archives Council Spring Meeting, Harvard University (2017).

As a governing leader of SAA, how will you use your three years on the SAA Council to provide value to SAA members, to increase opportunities for participation for all members, and to ensure a welcoming and inclusive environment in which SAA members can share, learn, and grow together?

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE

In the past decade, necessary and concerted changes have taken place within SAA’s committees and governing bodies that have begun to address the evolving makeup of the profession and the multiple needs of the members which the organization aims to represent and support. With increasing numbers of representatives from communities of color, for example, among leadership bodies such as the Nominating Committee and the SAA Council itself, the critical need to redistribute decision making power within the organization and to incorporate multiple voices in the determination of its future, has been more foregrounded. Indeed, the endorsement in August 2018 of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials is indicative of the importance of having individuals with different life experiences at the proverbial table. In contrast to the SAA that I first joined in the early 2000s, the organization has started taking steps toward challenging its own norms and biases, and to move beyond a mere rhetorical adherence to inclusivity and plurality, and a surface engagement with the rich and varied histories, identities, and political and cultural investments which members bring to the profession.

My interest in joining the SAA Council, and what I want to spend my three years working on in collaboration with both leadership and members, is to press the organization even further toward a rigorous analysis of its commitments to diversity and inclusion, and to help engender significant shifts in how its policies and programs address structural forms of inequity. Focusing on the economic, political, cultural, and environmental barriers that challenge our members and communities is key for our growth as a profession. Guided by my long-standing commitment to social justice, and the representation and agency of historically marginalized communities, I want to amplify the spaces occupied by working-class, LGBTQIA, disabled, and communities of color, among others, and to contribute toward increasing their opportunities to flourish and transform the profession. More than a mere cosmetic engagement with diversity, I want us to further challenge our ability to question our place within systems of power and oppression and, in turn, to ask ourselves who is really empowered to speak or assert agency within SAA. Although admittedly a tall order for three years, my hope is that I can make even a small contribution toward transforming standing institutional standards and practices, and increasing the depth of our commitments to creating empowering and empathetic spaces within the organization where the insights and life experiences of all of our community members are heard and accounted for.

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