Alexandra P. Alberda

This Element, about historical practice and genetics, seeks to understand what is at stake in presenting, preserving, and articulating the past in the present. Historical practice is both conceptual and material, a consonance of approach which is reflected in the innovative and non-traditional format of the Element itself – not simply in its length, but its constitution. The Element was created collaboratively with contributions from a range of disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of professional expertise. It consists of a series of interventions which are then discussed by the contributors and is foundationally multi-voiced and discursive. The Element attempts to be non-extractive, ethical, inclusive, collaborative, and constantly ongoing and provisional in its representation. The Element strives to contribute to ongoing attempts to rethink, reconfigure, reassess, and entirely change the object of study and the practice of history.

This Element, about historical practice and genetics, seeks to understand what is at stake in presenting, preserving, and articulating the past in the present. Historical practice is both conceptual and material, a consonance of approach which is reflected in the innovative and non-traditional format of the Element itself – not simply in its length, but its constitution. The Element was created collaboratively with contributions from a range of disciplines, backgrounds, and areas of professional expertise. It consists of a series of interventions which are then discussed by the contributors and is foundationally multi-voiced and discursive. The Element attempts to be non-extractive, ethical, inclusive, collaborative, and constantly ongoing and provisional in its representation. The Element strives to contribute to ongoing attempts to rethink, reconfigure, reassess, and entirely change the object of study and the practice of history.