History & Memory, Volume 20, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2008, pp. 60-83
Through close study of a 1930s legal dispute within a Macedono-Bulgarian
church congregation in Steelton, Pennsylvania, this article explores the importance
of “archive-work” as a particular form of political activism. Archive-work is
here presented as conscious and willful attempts by historical agents to imbue a
particular narrative, or set of claims, with the authority of “official record.” Such
archive-work is regularly undertaken by nationalizing states: this analysis, though,
focuses on the small-scale efforts by a determined group of individuals to disrupt a
state-sponsored narrative and enlist the authority of Pennsylvania law to legitimize
their alternative version of the past.
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