With a Little Help from Our Friends: Applying a Critical Friends Orientation to Critical Literature Reviews

Abstract

This paper describes how we developed and applied an exploratory critical friends orientation to a critical literature review that explores how feminist theories and approaches have been used in archival studies literature and reports on insights generated by this method. A critical friend is a trusted ally and critic who both values our ideas and can push them forward. Our “critical friends” critical literature review includes two parts; using traditional critical review methods we identify and synthesize how critical feminist approaches have been employed in archival studies literature. Atypically, and in part two, we also pay attention to those scholarly articles that discussed relevant or related concepts but were ultimately excluded from our final literature review corpus during the appraisal process. These peripheral articles act as critical friends to the research area under review. We describe how this approach identifies disciplinary boundaries and traditions and explores areas of overlap across intersecting and adjacent fields. A critical friends approach allows us to generously interpret and analyze the complex concepts of “feminisms” and “archives” across disciplinary fields in order to identify, learn from, and engage across fields that have much in common as well as fundamental differences.