Zakiya Collier

Work Title and Work Place

• Adjunct Lecturer, Queens College GSLIS

• Community Manager for the Documenting the Now project, Shift Collective

Courses Being Taught Presently and/or in the Past

• LBSCI 790.03 Community Archives and Libraries

Academic Statement

As an educator and memory worker, my approach is grounded in Black feminist theory and my lived experiences as Black queer, disabled, cis-gender woman. I aim to cultivate caring, accessible spaces for dialogue, collaboration, co-learning and unlearning. I encourage students to bring the fullness of their experiences and interests to the classroom as I believe that the personal is political and that political education is ongoing and necessary for an equitable future for this profession. My curricula center the work and needs of marginalized community archives/libraries/organizations in order to autonomously, ethically, and collectively preserve their memories and shape their futures. I also stand in solidarity with calls for liberatory memory work, accountability, abolition, legal support, wealth redistribution, land repatriation, and equitable resource funding as it relates to community archives and libraries and the communities who steward them. My goal is to embolden future and current librarians and archivists to research, question, imagine, cooperate, create, and iterate in service of abolishing oppressive structures and remembering and building frameworks that honor and recognize the humanity of those who have been harmed and neglected in extant systems within archives and libraries, and in the world, broadly.

I hold a BA in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina, an MLIS from Long Island University, and a MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. I am also a Certified Archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) and a co-editor of a special double issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.