collections: an open invitation
positions press collections are designed to be fractal and generative—each dataset, archive, or curated body of materials becomes a catalyst for multiple analytical approaches, theoretical frameworks, and research directions. Rather than presenting static resources, we create dynamic intellectual ecosystems where the process of collection-building becomes as valuable as the materials themselves. By documenting our methods and analytical processes, we reveal not just what we collected, but how we made complex materials legible to scholarly investigation.
We actively seek collaboration with scholars across career stages, disciplinary boundaries, and research interests, including graduate students, established scholars, and theoretically-minded researchers. The goal is to create living, evolving resources where each collection becomes a springboard for theoretical innovation, methodological experimentation, and scholarly discovery. Every contribution should expand what is possible with the materials, so that our collections can generate new knowledge rather than simply preserving existing scholarship.
Chinese Commercial Advertisement Archive
About Ephemera Project
Data Platform
The conditions of thought are found in the material communication of ideas in graphic form. Take these graphical arguments to be an underused archive, advertisement images suddenly become surprisingly philosophically and sociologically useful. Cartoon images like the lightbulb woman are meaningful because they are, among other factors, a pictorial version of ideas.
Conditions, thoughts, and actions are visible and open to discovery and analysis, no matter where on the globe historical action was taken.– Tani Barlow, “In the Event Of Women”
