Collecting, kitsch and the intimate geographies of social memory: a story of archival autoethnography

This paper engages recent creative approaches to the archive in geography to explore an approach I term archival autoethnography: collecting and contributing to the archive ourselves, and critically engaging with those practices. I use my own collection of kitsch souvenirs of the 19th‐century southern California novel Ramona – nearly all acquired after eB ay auctions transformed the geography of collectibles sale and acquisition – to show how collecting such objects transformed my research, lending insights into tourist experiences more than a century old and revealing how kitsch souvenirs help build intimate geographies of social memory. Publishing with illustrations from my collection drew public attention to the collection and eventually aided in the reinterpretation of two historic landmarks long linked to the novel. Contrary to prevailing interpretations of kitsch then, this paper reveals the cultural and political agency of kitsch souvenirs in shaping social memory. I show how moving derided objects into the realm of my scholarly research enabled me to build an alternative archive that shed new light on a historical topic, leading to the unexpected impact of my research in the broader community. I reveal how collecting and contributing to the archive ourselves, and analysing those practices in archival autoethnography, become valuable geographical research practices.