Archives and Autoethnography: Jewish Women, Black Women and Intersubjective Histories

Abby Gondek, Florida International University

Archives and Autoethnography is an experimental, multimedia exploration of feminist reflexivity, intersubjectivity, and archival research through the lives and works of Jewish women anthropologists Ruth Landes (1908-1991) and Ellen Hellmann (1908-1982). Blending biography and autoethnography, this presentation/ short film examines how researchers’ identities, emotions, and embodied experiences are impacted by the archival materials they engage with. Through creative nonfiction—polyvocal dialogues, poetry, and prose—this work interrogates power, sexuality, race, and social belonging in the anthropological study of Black women’s families in Brazil, South Africa, and the U.S. Structured as three thematic acts—fathers, mothers, and daughters; sex and relationships; and social death and suicide—the narrative interweaves archival artifacts, personal memories, and the voices of Landes, Hellmann, and myself, disrupting linear storytelling and traditional academic prose. This presentation invites readers into a layered, circular exploration of knowledge-making, challenging disciplinary boundaries and reimagining the relationship between researcher and her research subjects. The first scene in Act I is entitled "Visiting." It excavates the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power, exploring Ellen Hellmann's legacy as a South African Jewish public anthropologist, apartheid reformer, public servant, and Jewish community leader.  Through a feminist anthropological lens, incorporating reflexivity, psychobiography, and autoethnography, I navigate my emotional and intellectual responses to Ellen's archival artifacts—photographs, interviews, and newspaper publications—illuminating her internal experiences and the broader implications of her work. Hellmann's ethnographies of Black communities in South Africa intersect with my fieldwork experiences in Brazil with Jewish women of color. Her perpetuation of stereotypes about Black women's families, sexual practices, and child-rearing, prevalent in her white imperial networks, is critically examined. Through her advocacy for assimilation strategies for Jewish and Black South Africans, Hellmann's efforts often re-inscribed Jewish racial belonging in whiteness rather than directly challenging apartheid, a form of social death. ?

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 Presented in Session 109. Cruel Optimism? Women Maintaining the Status Quo or Organizing against It