ACLS
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Karp, Ivan
setName: label: See more items in
content: Ivan Karp papers
label: See more items in
content: Ivan Karp papers / Series 6: Born Digital Files / 6.1: Writings and Projects / Museums Studies
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1990 March-1997 January
label: Date
content: bulk 1990-1994
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: This folder seems to consist of a paper presented at a conference in March 1990 (IDENTITY.LEC) and a series of notes related to the paper's themes, but with file dates that post-date the lecture file. The conference seems to have been at the Smithsonian, based on internal references. It's highly possible that this was part of Karp's presentation at the Museums and Communities conference, which took place in March 1990 at the Smithsonian. The notes are partial outlines or short segments of text or copied sections of articles that Karp planned to use or quote. Some of these notes files are duplicative, but not identical. The file called IVAN is a compilation of many of the notes.

The general themes of the paper and the notes include concepts of identity and personhood, processes of identity formation, and the ways that systems of representation and politics and power entwine. They also engage debates around multiculturalism that were prominent at the time. The paper (IDENTITY.LEC) was not published, but some material from that and the notes were eventually worked into several publications: his two essays in Museums and Communities and "Reflections on the Fate of Tippoo's Tiger" (Karp and Kratz). Some illustrations and stories in the paper vary from the ones Karp used in published work.

This folder may be titled ACLS because Karp gave a lecture for ACLS around that time. From 1988-92, he was Chair of the SSRC/ACLS Joint Committee on Africa-Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship Program for Research and Training for Social Scientists in the Natural Sciences. In this capacity he would have been in regular contact with people from all three foundations (ACLS, SSRC, Rockefeller).