Archive, Theater, Ship: The Phelps Sisters Film the World

Examines the archival survival of the amateur travelog films made by Eleanor and Claudia Lea Phelps from 1923 to 1930. Argues that early twenty-first century interest in these materials testifies to archives’ heterotopian properties, as described by Michel Foucault in his 1967 essay “Of Other Spaces.” It follows that the aim of archival work should not be to preserve or recover the past, but to transform present day institutions and their relationships. Scholars of “women and the silent screen” are engaged in precisely this kind of activity