I N T H E S TA C K S
When Every Box is the Last Box At the start of the pandemic, students and faculty from U-M’s History Department collaborated with Bentley archivists to find creative ways to produce a successful research project, even without physical access to archival materials. By Alexander Clayton, Henry Cowles, and Gregory Parker
IN THE ARCHIVES, THERE’S ALWAYS THAT LAST BOX. The one you meant to check—but didn’t. Maybe the reading room was closing and you told yourself you’d request it first thing the next morning. Or you remembered it over lunch and made a note to see it when you sat back down. But there were other boxes. You forgot.
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The last box could contain anything. A key connection for your argument, a biographical detail you knew you needed. Or even the proverbial smoking gun, the ironclad proof that Dewey really did defeat Truman. But the thing about the last box is that you never do get to check it. It’s elusive. Because after that last box, there’s always another last box. But what if every box were the last box? What if you never got to see any boxes— and still had to do the hard work of history? In answer to that question, this past
