Real-World Archives

The goal of this archive–which includes transcripts from interviews we had the pleasure of conducting with classmates and friends–is to emphasize one of the primary missions of our project: to understand and cultivate narratives about universal experiences through the many doorways of personal experience. In these interviews (including the brief answers to the questionnaire we sent out to our classmates), we culled narratives about adaptability, movement, home-making, identity, and relationship that arise frequently in sometimes unanticipated and surprising places. Whether it’s a conversation about vegetarianism, family dynamics, or Polish comfort food, there is always something to be discovered at a deeper level. Though some of the content may not relate directly to the Lurcy story, that is largely intentional; what we have striven to accomplish with Real-World Archives is simply to make something very broad–Jewish experience–into something that is both imminent and intimate. We trust our readers, listeners, and visitors to make the connections themselves–connections not only to the Lurcy story, but to their own story. While this project did not challenge us to pull a story out of thin air, it did challenge us to pull a story from an arguably more fraught and unwieldly place: an overwhelming mass of hitherto unexplored legal documents. At the start of this project, this seemed almost impossible, but now that we are on the other side, we can attest definitively that a story can be found anywhere you are willing to look for one. And so, our group is challenging you–our visitors–to engage in a similarly challenging task: go out into the wilds of unkempt text and find a story. And if you can’t find one, then we encourage you to do as we did, and make one.