TCNJ

34 The College of New Jersey Magazine "This is not just a souvenir," she says. "This is much more than that." The Soweto house and other pieces of the collection led her to ask the questions that Jaksch and Schiff say are part of thoughtful archival work: "What is the story it's telling based on the metadata that you're writing?" Riley says. "What are the things that you're leaving out and the perspective that you're writing from?" Riley's work with the collection has carried her to unexpected opportuni- ties, including presenting on her experience at an October conference hosted by the Curriculum and Pedagogy Group in Mexico City. There, she detailed the process of accessioning materials — recording their addition to the archive — and encouraged attendees to consider the items they would archive to represent places where they have felt belonging or un-belonging. She also gave a guest lecture for an online course at UCLA, offering students a window into what above: Ebony Riley prepares a carved sculpture for photographic documenta- tion in a light box. facing page: Professor Marla Jaksch and Ebony Riley '26 it looks like for a newcomer to dive into archival work. Riley has been asking herself how best to honor the Apartheid stories that need to be told and how Nieves' collection can serve that aim. "This is a lot bigger than myself," she says. Riley and Jaksch prepared an exhibition of the archive with displays in both TCNJ's R. Barbara Gitenstein Library and in the side art galleries in the Art and Interactive Multimedia Building. Pieces from Nieves' collection are presented alongside newspaper clippings revealing what student activism looked like at TCNJ during Apartheid. The exhibition, which runs through February, was timed to the 50th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. Jaksch describes developing the collection into an archive as a "labor of love." As much as the work is about what emerges from the archive — the education it can offer and the research it can support — it's also a reflection of the care that goes into its creation, the people who made it, and the people whose stories it contains. There is still plenty to be done, and the path ahead is uncertain, much as it was when she first gathered the boxes. But she's eager to keep moving forward on the journey with Riley, she says. "This archive is now really in our hands," Jaksch says. "So we have a responsibility to the people whose lives are in this archive, whose legacies and struggles we now hold." ■ Ben Seal is a freelance journalist based in South Philadelphia. He likes to write about people who reshape institutions that govern our relationships with one another and the world around us. Hannah Yoon is a photographer who was part of the Pulitzer Prize finalist team at The Washington Post for its coverage of Hurricane Helene.

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