Publications

Efadul Huq, Anna Robinson-Sweet, and Michelle Caswell, “Queer Kins and Accomplices: The Importance of Shared Positionality in Vulnerable Oral History,” Storied Memories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral Histories edited by Thuy Vo Dang and David Yoo (Oxford University Press, expected 2026).

Michelle Caswell, “Archives,” chapter in Digital Preservation: A Critical Vocabulary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), accepted for publication, in press.

Michelle Caswell, Anna Robinson-Sweet, and Sadaf Maleki, “Sometimes A Kitchen, Sometimes a Zoom Call: Experiences of Recording Oral Histories Online,” The Public Historian 48:1 (February 2026): 22-50.

Michelle Caswell, Thuy Vo Dang, Tonia Sutherland, Anna Robinson-Sweet, and James Epps, “Archiving the Arts: Preserving Our Past, Cultivating Our Future: Guidelines and a Three-Part Study on Preserving the History of BIPOC-Centered Arts Organizations,” South Asian American Digital Archive with support from the Wallace Foundation, white paper (2026), https://saada-website.s3.amazonaws.com/explore/programs/archiving-the-arts/Archiving-the-Arts-Final-Report.pdf.

Anna Robinson-Sweet and Michelle Caswell, “Paying it Forward: The Prefigurative Politics of Record Creation,” Kula: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 8:1 (2025), https://kula.uvic.ca/index.php/kula/article/view/292/513.

Michelle Caswell and Bergis Jules, “If Federal Museums Aren’t Allowed to Tell the Truth About the Past, It’s Time to Start Supporting the Organizations that Can,” Sustainable Futures Blog, https://medium.com/community-archives/if-federal-museums-arent-allowed-to-tell-the-truth-about-the-past-it-stime-to-start-supporting-f3dfb985f5b0 (December 17, 2025).

Michelle Caswell and Anna Robinson-Sweet, “Starting A Peer-to-Peer Oral History Project for Community Groups: A Toolkit,” After Violence Project website, https://vbtoolkit.afterviolenceproject.org/ (October 2025).

Michelle Caswell, “Power, Positionality, Community: Three Lessons to and from Critical Archival Studies.” In Futures of Digital Scholarly Editing (University of Minnesota Press, 2025).

Michelle Caswell, Tonia Sutherland, Anna Robinson-Sweet, James Epps, “’No More Basements’: A Qualitative Report on BIPOC-Centered Arts Organizations’ Archival Practices and Needs,” Report Commissioned by the South Asian American Digital Archive with support from the Wallace Foundation (2025). https://spotlight.saada.org/collections/publications/products/no-more-basements

Michelle Caswell, “Digital Feminist Care Ethics: Assessing the Web of Archival Relationships.” A Brand New Life (2024), https://brand-new-life.org/b-n-l/caswell-michelle/.

Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, Vanessa Reyes, Sumayya Ahmed, Thuy Vo Dang, Tonia Sutherland, James Lowry, Jamie Lee, Jennifer Douglas, Gracen Brilmyer, “Envisioning A Paid Community Archives Internship Program: Opportunities and Challenges,” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 2024.

Michelle Caswell, “Afterword: Corollary Records, Precarity, and Care,” in Archiving Activism in the Digital Age, Daniele Salerno and Ann Rigney Eds., (Amsterdam: Institute of Networked Cultures, 2024), 148-151.

Michelle Caswell and Anna Robinson-Sweet, “‘We Bounce Off Each Other’s Vibe’: The Importance of Symmetrical Intersubjectivity between Interviewer and Narrator,” The Oral History Review 51:1 (Spring 2024): 179-202, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00940798.2024.2316904.

Caswell, Michelle. “’The Archive’ Is Not an Archives: On Acknowledging the Intellectual Contributions of Archival Studies.” [Originally published in Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 16:1 (2016) (special issue “Archives on Fire”), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7bn4v1fk.] Updated, revised and reprinted as first chapter in Archives: Power, Truth, and Fiction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature Series, 2023): 21-36.

Michelle Caswell and Anna Robinson-Sweet, “’It Was As Much for Me As for Anybody Else’: The Creation of Self-Validating Records,” The Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 10 (2023), https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol10/iss1/10/. Translated into Italian in Riconoscersi (“Recognize Yourself”), edited by Simona Bodo (Nomos Edizioni: Busto Arsizio, expected 2026).

Michelle Caswell, “So that Future Organizers Won’t Have to Reinvent the Wheel”: Activating Digital Archives for Liberatory Uses,” Learning from and Making Use of Digitized Hidden Collections: Proceedings from the 2022 Digitizing Hidden Collections Symposium, Council on Library and Information Resources (2023), https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/11/22DHCS-full-proceedings.pdf.

Michelle Caswell, “Against Archival Collections as Data,” Collections as Data position paper, Internet Archive Vancouver, April 2023. https://zenodo.org/records/7897735

Michelle Caswell, “ARQUIVOS COMUNITÁRIOS E O TRABALHO DE MEMÓRIA LIBERTADORA,” O papel social da Ciência da Informação em novos contextos Série Estudos da Informação, vol. 7, Universidade Federal Fluminense: Niteroi, Brazil, 2023. (Translated into Portuguese by Natalia Tognoli).

Joyce Gabiola, Gracen Brilmyer, Jimmy Zavala, Michelle Caswell, “’It’s a Trap’: Complicating Representation in Community-Based Archives,” The American Archivist (Spring 2022).

Michelle Caswell, Safiya Noble, Sarah T. Roberts, and Tonia Sutherland, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Library and Information Studies and the Mattering of Black Lives,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 4:1 (2022), https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/196.

Reciprocity in Research Records Collaborative (Jennifer Douglas; June Chow, Rachael Bradshaw, Samip Mallick, Nivetha (Niv) Karthikeyan, Bergis Jules, Gabriel Solis, Jane Field, Morris (Dino) Robinson, Patrisia Gonzales, Kathryn (Kat) Rodriguez, Joel A. Saldaña Perez, Anna Robinson-Sweet, Michelle Caswell), “’Come Correct or Don’t Come at All’: Building More Equitable Relationships Between Archival Studies Scholars and Community Archives.” White Paper. (December 2021).
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7v00k2qz

Caswell, Michelle. “The Impact of Paid Internships at Community Archives for MLIS Students: A White Paper Reporting on the UCLA Community Archives Lab/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Internship Program,” (August 2021): https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8z63869z.

Caswell, Michelle. Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work. (London: Routledge, 2021).

Robert Montoya, Gregory Leazer, Jeremy Abbott, Safiya Noble, Michelle Caswell, Carlin Soos, “Examining Concepts of the Public: Who is Served by Information Services?” Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 58:1 (2021): 619-621.

Itza Carbajal and Michelle Caswell, “Critical Digital Archives: A Review from Archival Studies,” American Historical Review (September 2021): 1102-1120.

Michelle Caswell, “Archives for Liberation: How SAADA Catalyzes Corollary Records,” Tides: The Magazine of the South Asian American Digital Archive, August 2, 2021. https://www.saada.org/tides/article/archives-for-liberation

Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor, “Revisiting A Feminist Ethics of Care in Archives: Introductory Note,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, Special Issue on Radical Empathy (Spring 2021), https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/162.

Gracen Brilmyer, Michelle Caswell, Marika Cifor, “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice Poster and Postcards,” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, Special Issue on Radical Empathy (Spring 2021), https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/169.

Caswell, Michelle. “Affective Bonds: What Community Archives Can Teach Mainstream Institutions,” In Bastian, Jeannette and Flinn, Andrew, Eds. Community Archives, Community Spaces: Heritage, Memory and Identity, (London: Facet, 2020).

Caswell, Michelle; Gabiola, Joyce; Brilmyer, Gracen; Zavala, Jimmy. “‘Carry It Forward’: Community-Based Conceptualizations of Accountability,” In Elizabeth Yakel and Jeannette Bastian, Eds. Defining a Discipline: Essays in Honor of Richard Cox,(Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2020).

Wendy Duff and Michelle Caswell. “Methodologies for Archival Impact Studies,” in Archives, Recordkeeping and Social Justice (London, UK: Routledge, 2020), 52-69.

Caswell, Michelle. “Dusting for Fingerprints: Introducing Feminist Standpoint Appraisal.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 3:1 (2020), special issue on feminist ethics. https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/113/67

Michelle Caswell, “Feeling Liberatory Memory Work: On the Archival Uses of Joy and Anger,” Archivaria 90 (Fall 2020), 148-164.

Brilmyer, Gracen; Gabiola, Joyce; Zavala, Jimmy; and Caswell, Michelle. “Reciprocal Archival Imaginaries: The Shifting Boundaries of ‘Community’ in Community Archives,” Archivaria 88 (2019): 6-48.

Tai, Jessica; Gabiola, Joyce; Zavala, Jimmy;  Brilymer, Gracen; and Caswell, Michelle. “Summoning the Ghosts: Records as Agents.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 6 (2019): https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol6/iss1/18/. 

Caswell, Michelle and Marika Cifor, “Neither a Beginning Nor an End: Applying an Ethics of Care to Digital Archival Collections,” The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Heritage Sites. Routledge, 2019.

Caswell, Michelle. “Troubling Accounts of the Archives,” Interactions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 15: 2 (2019), https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4b18x1th.

J.J. Ghaddar and Michelle Caswell, “’To Go Beyond’: Towards a Decolonial Archival Praxis,” Introduction to the Special Issue on Decolonization, Archival Science 19 (Spring 2019): 71-85.

Michelle Caswell, “That Archival Spark,” Tides Magazine, March 29, 2019, https://www.saada.org/tides/article/the-archival-spark.

Mallick, Samip and Caswell, Michelle. “Against Precarity: Towards a Community-Based Notion of Fiscal Sustainability.” Sustainable Futures Project: https://medium.com/@samip_6256/815d1d889309.

Caswell, Michelle and Jules, Bergis. “Integrating Community Archives into a National Digital Platform: Challenges, Opportunities and Recommendations.” White Paper, Diversifying the Digital Consortium  (January 2018): http://diversifyingthedigital.org/uploads/8/8/7/3/88738438/ddhr_whitepaper_jan_2018.pdf.

Cifor, Marika; Caswell, Michelle; Migoni, Alda Allina; and Geraci, Noah. “’What We Do Crosses Over to Activism’: The Politics and Practice of Community Archives.” The Public Historian 40 no. 2 (May 2018): 69-95.

Caswell, Michelle; Gabiola, Joyce; Brilmyer, Gracen;  Zavala, Jimmy; and Cifor, Marika. “Imagining Transformative Spaces: The Personal-Political Sites of Community Archives,” Archival Science 18 (2018): 73-93.

Caswell, Michelle. “Envisioning a Critical Archival Pedagogy.” The Politics of Theory and the Practice of Critical Librarianship. Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2018: 159-166.

Michelle Caswell, Joyce Gabiola, Gracen Brilmyer, Jimmy Zavala, Jessica Tai, “Assessing the Affective Impact of Community Archives: A Toolkit,” UCLA Community Archives Lab, November 2018, https://communityarchiveslab.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/InitialToolkit-compressed.pdf

Gabiola, Joyce and Caswell, Michelle. “‘Are You a Spy?’: Methodological Challenges to Studying Community Archives,” Society of American Archivists Research Forum Proceedings 2017.

Zavala, Jimmy;  Migoni, Alda Allina; Cifor, Marika; Geraci, Noah; and  Caswell, Michelle. “‘A Process Where We’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice,” Archives and Manuscripts 2017.

Caswell, Michelle (with graphic design by Gracen Brilmyer). “Teaching to Dismantle White Supremacy in the Archives Classroom.” Library Quarterly 87(3) (2017), special issue “Aftermath: Libraries and the U.S. Election”: 222-235.

Caswell, Michelle. Review of James A. Tyner. Landscape, Memory and Post-Violence in Cambodia in Public Historian 39(3) (2017): 145-146.

Caswell, Michelle, Ricardo Punzalan, and T-Kay Sangwand. “Critical Archival Studies: An Introduction.” Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies 2 (2017), http://libraryjuicepress.com/journals/index.php/jclis/article/view/50.

Caswell, Michelle, Christopher Harter, and Bergis Jules. “Diversifying the Digital Historical Record: Integrating Community Archives in National Strategies for Access to Digital Cultural Heritage,” D-Lib Magazine 23:5/6 (May/June 2017): http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may17/caswell/05caswell.html.

Doria Johnson, Jarrett Drake, and Michelle Caswell, “From Cape Town to Chicago to Colombo and Back Again: Towards a Liberation Theology for Memory Work,” Nelson Mandela Foundation, February 27, 2017, https://www.nelsonmandela.org/news/entry/reflections-from-the-2016-mandela-dialogues.

Caswell, Michelle; Migoni,Alda Allina; Geraci, Noah; and Cifor, Marika. “’To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: Community Archives and the Importance of Representation,” Archives and Records 38 no. 1(2016) (special issue on public history): 1-20.

Caswell, Michelle; Cifor, Marika; and Ramirez, Mario H. “’To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing’: Uncovering the Affective Impact of Community Archives,” The American Archivist 79 (Spring/ Summer 2016): 56-81. Winner, Fellows Ernst Posner Award, Society of American Archivists.

Lorraine Dong, Joel Blanco Rivera, Michelle Caswell, Joanna Steele, “Examinations of Injustice: Methods for Studying Archives in a Human Rights Context,” book chapter in Research in the Archival Multiverse. Anne Gilliland, Sue McKemmish, Andrew J Lau, Eds. Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2016.

Caswell, Michelle and Marika Cifor. “From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives.” Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43.

Caswell, Michelle and Ricky Punzalan. “Archives and Human Rights: Questioning Notions of Information and Access.” In Perspectives on Libraries as Institutions of Human Rights and Social Justice (Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald Insight Advances in Librarianship Series, 2016), 287-301.

Gilliland, Anne and Michelle Caswell. “Records and Their Imaginaries: Imagining the Impossible, Making Possible the Imagined.” Archival Science 16(1) (2016): 53-75. Honorable Mention, 2016 Library Juice Paper Competition.

Caswell, Michelle. “The Future of the Painful Past: The Materiality of the Digital in the South Asian American Digital Archive.” In Excavating Memory: Material Culture Approaches to Sites of Remembering and Forgetting. (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2016)

Geraci, Noah and Michelle Caswell. “Developing a Typology of Human Rights Records.” Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies 3: Article 1 (2016), http://elischolar.library.yale.edu/jcas/vol3/iss1/1/. Translated and reprinted in Portuguese: Geraci, N. e Caswell, M. 2019. Desenvolvendo uma tipologia de documentos relacionados aos direitos humanos. Revista Ibero-Americana de Ciência da Informação. 12, 3 (set. 2019), 997-1024. DOI:https://doi.org/10.26512/rici.v12.n3.2019.24467.

Punzalan, Ricardo and Michelle Caswell. “Critical Directions for Archival Approaches to Social Justice.” Library Quarterly 86 (1) (2016): 25-42.

Caswell, Michelle and Anne Gilliland. “False Promise and New Hope: Dead Perpetrators, Imagined Documents, and Emergent Archival Evidence.” International Journal of Human Rights 19(5) 2015: 615-627.

Caswell, Michelle. “Documenting South Asian American Struggles Against Racism: Community Archives In a Post-9/11 World.” In Cultural Memories of Nonviolent Struggles: Powerful Times. Anna Reading and Tamar Katriel, Eds. London: Palgrave, 2015.

Caswell, Michelle. Review of Christian Delage. Caught on Camera: Film in the Courtroom from the Nuremberg Trials to the Trials of the Khmer Rouge in American Historical Review 120:2 (2015): 571.

Caswell, Michelle. Archiving the Unspeakable: Silence, Memory, and the Photographic Record in Cambodia. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Winner, Waldo Gifford Leland Award for Best Publication, Society of American Archivists, 2015. Short List, International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize, 2015.

Caswell, Michelle. “Seeing Yourself in History: Community Archives in the Fight Against Symbolic Annihilation.” The Public Historian 36(4) November 2014: 26-37.

Caswell, Michelle. “Community-Centered Collecting: Finding Out What Communities Want from Community Archives.” Proceedings of the 77th ASIS&T Annual Meeting, volume 51, October 31-November 4, 2014.

Caswell, Michelle. “Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Human Rights Archives: Lessons from Community-Based Archives.” Archival Science 14: 3-4 (2014): 307-322. Special Double Issue on Human Rights Archives.

Caswell, Michelle. “Inventing New Archival Imaginaries: Theoretical Foundations for Identity-Based Community Archives.” In Identity Palimpsests: Ethnic Archiving in the U.S. and Canada. Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2014, 35-55. Winner, 2014 Library Juice Paper Competition.

Caswell, Michelle and Samip Mallick. “Collecting the Easily Missed Stories: Digital Participatory Microhistory and the South Asian American Digital Archive.” Archives and Manuscripts 42:1 (2014): 73-86. Reprinted in Participatory Archives in a World of Ubiquitous Media. London: Routledge, 2015.

Caswell, Michelle. “Defining Human Rights Archives: Introduction to the Special Double Issue on Archives and Human Rights.” Archival Science 14:3-4 (2014): 207-213.

Caswell, Michelle. “On Pluralism: What Religious Pluralism Can Teach Us About Archival Studies.” Archival Science 13 (2013): 273-92.

Caswell, Michelle. “Rethinking Inalienability: Trusting Nongovernmental Archives in Transitional Societies.” American Archivist 76(1) (2013): 113-134.

Caswell, Michelle. “Not Just Between Us: A Riposte to Mark Greene.” American Archivist (2013).

Caswell, Michelle. “Using Classification to Convict the Khmer Rouge,” Journal of Documentation 68(2) (2012): 162-184.

Caswell, Michelle. “Classifying Khmer Rouge Genocide: Archival Description, Ethnic Identity, and Accountability,” Archives without Borders: Archiefkunde 12 (2012), 223-235.

Michelle Caswell, Giso Broman, Jennifer Kirmer, Laura Martin, Nathan Sowry. “Implementing a Social Justice Framework in an Introduction to Archives Course: Lessons from Both Sides of the Classroom,” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 8:2 (2012).

Caswell, Michelle and Andrew J Lau. “Editor’s Note: Special Section on Archival Education and Human Rights.” InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies 8:2 (2012).

Caswell, Michelle. “SAADA and the Community-Based Archives Model: What’s a Community Based Archives Anyway?” Invited Guest Post, South Asian American Digital Archive, April 2012. http://www.saadigitalarchive.org/blog/20120418-704

Caswell, Michelle. “‘Thank You Very Much, Now Give Them Back’: Cultural Property and the Fight Over the Iraqi Baath Party Records,” American Archivist 74 (Spring/Summer 2011): 211-240.

Pluralizing the Archival Curriculum Group, Archival Education and Research Institute, “Educating for the Archival Multiverse,” American Archivist 74 (Spring/Summer 2011): 69-101.

Caswell, Michelle. “Hannah Arendt’s World: Bureaucracy, Documentation and Banal Evil,” Archivaria 70: (Fall 2010): 1-25.

Eschenfelder, Kristin and Michelle Caswell, “Digital Cultural Collections in an Age of Reuse and Remixes,” First Monday 15:1 (2010), http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3060/2640

Caswell, Michelle. “Khmer Rouge Archives: Accountability, Truth, and Memory in Cambodia,” Archival Science 10: 1-2 (2010): 25-44.

Caswell, Michelle. “Using Archival Description to Foster Accountability,” Invited Guest Post, The Witness Blog, October 2010.

Caswell, Michelle. “Publish or Perish?” Midwest Archives Conference Newsletter. January 2010.

Caswell, Michelle. “Instant Documentation: Cell Phone Generated Records in Archives,” American Archivist 72:1 (Spring/ Summer 2009): 133-145.

Caswell, Michelle. “Irreparable Damage: Violence, Ownership, and Voice in an Indian Archive,” Libri: International Journal of Library and Information Services 59:1 (Spring 2009): 1-13. http://www.librijournal.org/2009-1toc.html

Caswell, Michelle. “Bathing in Turkey.” Eight Forty-Eight, Chicago Public Radio. August 27, 2007.

Caswell, Michelle. “A Bad Day in Cambodia.” InTheFray.org. March 4, 2007.

Caswell, Michelle. “Whose Music Is It Anyway?: A Review of Why White Kids Love Hip Hop.” InTheFray.org. December 5, 2005.

Vo Dang, Thuy, Karen Umemoto, and Kelly Fong. “Foundations and Futures: Imagining Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies in Every Home.” Journal of Asian American Studies, 26, no. 2 (2023): 255-264. DOI:10.1353/jaas.2023.a901073

Vo Dang, Thuy. “The Preservation and Production of Diasporic Knowledge: Oral History and Archival Contributions,” in Toward a Framework for Vietnamese American Studies: History, Community, and Memory, Eds. Linda Ho Peche, Alex-Thai Dinh Vo, and Tuong Vu. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 2023, pp. 273-286. 

Huỳnh, Julia, Phuc Duy Nhu To, Cevadne Lee, Thuy Vo Dang, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, and Sora Park Tanjasiri. “Care during COVID-19: A Virtual Asian American and Pacific Islander Photovoice Project.” AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community 19, No. 1 & 2 (Spring 2022) http://www.aapinexus.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Nexus_19_1_2_Huynh_etal.pdf 

To, Phuc DN, Julia Huynh, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Thuy Vo Dang, Cevadne Lee, and Sora Park Tanjasiri. “Through Our Eyes, Hear Our Stories: A Virtual Photovoice Project to Document and Archive Asian American and Pacific Islander Community Experiences During COVID-19.” Health Promotion Practice. 23:2(2022):289-295. DOI:10.1177/15248399211060777 *Winner of the 2022 Society of Public Health Education Paper of the Year

Lewinnek, Elaine, Gustavo Arellano, and Thuy Vo Dang. A People’s Guide to Orange County. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022.
Lewinnek, Elaine and Thuy Vo Dang. “How We’re Making California History Public History in Orange County,”University of California Press Blog, October 2022.