Not-So-Ordinary · Critical Archives of Ordinariness: Vernacular Moving Image Practices and Migrant Identity in Polish Chicago

This project explores home movies and related oral histories of Polish Chicago before the digital era (1960s–2000s) to challenge and broaden our understanding of evolving migrant and diaspora identities. Following critical archive studies’ call to empower communities underrepresented in historiography by developing and interrogating archival collections, the project juxtaposes home movies – “ordinary” motion pictures created for family and close friends – with interviews with their creators to uncover the “not-so-ordinary” capabilities of this underused data source for studying minority groups. The project investigates a specific case: the interplay of vernacular moving image practices and the transformations of Polish diaspora identity in Chicago; however, it leads to conclusions of wider significance. By creating a research collection of home movies and related oral histories, it demonstrates how to contextualize historical home movies. By showing how evolving analog home movie technology (shift from film to video) altered vernacular moving image practices of the Polish diaspora, it contributes to media archeology. By reconstructing transnational micro-histories of home movies circulating between countries, it expands the field of transnational history. By identifying the role of vernacular moving image practices in shaping identities, it contributes to cultural anthropology and migrant/diaspora studies. By providing guidance on home movies as a research source and by showing the use of the movie-interview analytical unit, it enhances the empirical toolbox for social sciences and the humanities. To go beyond the state of the art while ensuring mutually beneficial knowledge exchange, the project combines the complementary expertise of a postdoc (visual culture, identity, archives, qualitative methods) and supervisors from the University of Chicago (transnational history), Chicago Film Archives (archiving and digitalization), and KU Leuven (media and film studies).