Nepal Picture Library, an archive set up by photo.circle, is organising three reading seminars pertaining to the various aspects of archiving and historical memory and their relations to gender and feminist thought and practice. photo.circle also recently launched the Feminist Memory Project, which will collect historical photographs and audio or written documents relating to the history of feminism in Nepal.

The oncoming three-legged seminars will revolve around the question of how private memories might serve as an examination of history and how power informs and shapes the construction of memory.

The organisers have assigned readings and movies for the participants.

The first seminar, titled History Begins at Home, will take place on April 30, and will see discussion of texts such as Memory Becomes Her, by Antoinette Burton; Between Love and Property: Voice, Sentiment, and Subjectivity in the Reform of Daughter’s Inheritance in Nepal, by Laura Kunreuther; Publics of Heritage and Domestic Archives among the Nepali Middle Class,

by Laura Kunreuther; and The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers, by Maryanne Dever. Also to be discussed at the event is the film Stories We Tell, directed by Sarah Polley.

The second seminar, Thinking About Archives, will take place on May 7 and see discussion of texts such as the Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa, by Verne Harris; In the Archive of Lesbian Feelings by Ann Cvetkovich; and Archive fever: Photography between History and the Monument, by Okwui Enwezor. The second leg of the seminar will see a discussion around the Michael Verhoeven film The Nasty Girl.

Likewise, the third leg of the seminar will have for discussion texts such as Photography and Cultural Memory: A Methodological Exploration by Annette Kuhn; and Uchronic Dreams: Working-class Memory and Possible World, by Alessandro Portelli.

The seminars, which are free of cost, will conclude on May 14.