Harold Hardin is joining us in Archives & Special Collections this spring to work on finishing the NEH grant-funded project The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic. Harold will be helping QA digital objects among other tasks related to the digitization workflow.

Harold Hardin is a current student in Cuesta Colleges’ Library/Information Technology program and San Francisco City College’s Paralegal Studies program. While pursuing a double major in Sociology/Critical Race Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz Harold developed an academic interest in the often hidden and occluded histories of marginalized communities, particularly histories of oppression and resistance. Through their own experiences of political activism at UC Santa Cruz and beyond (#Blacklivesmatter Oakland/ Stockton, GaySHAME SF) Harold has insisted on moving iteratively between theory and praxis: centering an intersectional feminist analysis of power. 

These analytical lenses and political participation increased Harold’s consciousness regarding the fundamental ways in which access to information (particularly personal/community histories) profoundly shapes participation in our democracy (or lack thereof). Harold is interested in the nuances of political participation and uncovering the innumerable sites of quotidian resistance! Therefore, Harold sees their internship within UCSF’s AIDS History Project as not only a unique privilege to work toward increasing community access to Queer history, but also, and importantly,  an extension of the deeply personal (political) work of (re)understanding their multiple positions within (and outside) of the Archives.