Adoptee Literary and Art Archive (ALAA)

This project began out of disappointment. Why are spaces outside of the adoptee community silent on environmental injustices surrounding adoption? In the discourse surrounding uncertain toxic futurities, reproductive anxieties, and climate disasters, adoptees of color (and their birth families) are typically erased in narratives of environmentalism and rescue.

Adoptee Literary and Art Archive (ALAA) argues that environmental justice is adoptee justice by directly addressing the gap in scholarly and public discourse between environmental studies and critical adoption studies. ALAA is a digital humanities project of digitized transracial/transnational adoptee literature and art, including poetry, memoirs, recipes, paintings, drawings, sculpture, film, and textiles. ALAA was developed using CollectionBuilder, an open-source tool for creating digital collections.

ALAA served as Hannah Gershone’s terminal master’s project in the Environmental Studies Department at the University of Oregon in 2022 and was directed by Dr. Sarah D. Wald (Chair), Kate Thornhill, and Dr. Mattie Burkert.

Call for Submissions January 30 - June 15, 2023

Eligibility

• 18 years of age or older for all contributors, including collaborative works
• Self-identify as a transracial adoptee (identify as a different race from adoptive parents) for all contributors OR have a parent or grandparent who identifies as a transracial adoptee
• Domestic, international, and foster-care transracial adoptees are encouraged to contribute
• Collaborative art and literary works by transracial adoptees are accepted
• One submission accepted per contributor or artist collective

What To Submit

• One piece of literature or artwork that speaks to your relationship with the environment. This includes both urban and ‘natural’ spaces. One submission is accepted per contributor or artist collective.
• Optional Artist or Artist Collective Bio (max 100 words)
• Optional Artist Statement (max 250 words)
• If applicable, a link to your Artist or Artist Collective Website

How to Submit

The submission process will vary slightly depending on what kind of work you are submitting. Please visit ALAA Submissions for more information.

Note: Current visible items in the collection are substitutes for work and are used to help potential contributors to ALAA get a feel for what the collection will look like after June 2023.

Project Documentation- Pending Committee Review

• ALAA Data Management Plan
• ALAA Data Dictionary
• ALAA Metadata
• ALAA Written Project Report (University of Oregon Scholars Bank)
• CollectionBuilder Documentation (ALAA uses CollectionBuilder-GH)

Features

• Jekyll for GitHub Pages
• Layout using Bootstrap 5
• Mapping using Leaflet.js
• Tables using DataTables
• Galleries using spotlight
• Simple lunr search
• Rich markup using Schema.org and Open Graph protocol standards

License

Adoptee Literary and Art Archive documentation and digital special collection are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 International. This allows artists to retain their copyright and let their work be shared under non-commercial and non-derivative conditions. For more information about the implications for contributors submitting work to Adoptee Literary and Art Archive, please visit licensing for more information (not a substitute for the license itself).