An unruly—and much-needed—model for how to do the archive differently.

~Scott Herring

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

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

Table of Contents

History of the Collection, Jonathan P. Eburne and Judith Roof

Box I: Saving America: Archival Proliferations. Includes:
1. Joseph Campana and Tedd Bale, "Pawning, Picking, Storing, Hoarding: Archiving America on Reality Television."
An examination of the massive reality television fixation on picking, storing, pawning, and hoarding.
2. Atia Sattar, "Germ Wars: Dirty Hands, Drinking Lips and Dixie Cups"
A discussion of germs, gender, and the Dixie Cup Archive.
3. Beth McCoy, "The Archive of the Archive of the Archive: The FEMA Signs of Post-Katrina New Orleans and the Vévé of Vodoun."
A comparison of Veve and FEMA markings in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Box II: Collective Figures. Includes:
4. Robin Blyn, "Marcuse's Unreason: The Biology of Revolution"
Rereading Marcuse's odd positioning in the world of political philosophy.
5. Dennis Allen, "The Madness of Slavoj Žižek."
Ponders the ubiquity of Slavoj Žižek.
6. Jonathan P. Eburne, "Fish Kit."
A look at David Lynch's extra-cinematic art of assemblage and dissection.

Box III: Untimely Archives. Includes:
7. Timothy Sweet, "The Eighteenth-Century Archives du Monde: The Question of Agency in Extinction Stories"
Considers Native American and Colonial theories for the extinction of dinosaurs.
8. Charles Tung, "Modernist Heterochrony, Evolutionary Biology, and the Chimera of Time."
How bodies, genes, and H.G. Wells play with heterochronies.
9. Aaron Jaffe, "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER: Information at the Literary Limit."
What happens when the archive has too much and not enough.

Box IV: Archives Acting Out. Includes:
10. Judith Roof, "Personifying La Con, or Post-Hoax Ergo Proper Hoax"
Anatomizes hoaxes and their dependence on an archive.
11. Grant Aubrey Farred, "The Eleventh Commandment."
Being revolutionary with Thomas Paine and Saint Paul.
12. Seth Morton, "The Archive that Knew Too Little: The International Necronautical Society and the Avant-Garde."
What happens when the INS plays with itself.

Archival Supplement: Afterword. Includes:
David L. Martin, "The Oddball Archive: Politics, Performance, Agency"
A retrospective.