Sarah Petras

Biography

Sarah Petras is the Assistant Archivist at IU’s Black Film Center and Archive (BFCA), the only repository in the world solely dedicated to collecting, preserving, and celebrating Black film history. She holds a master’s degree in Library Science with a specialization in Rare Books and Manuscripts and an M.A. in English Literature from Indiana University. During her graduate studies at IU, she worked as a graduate assistant for the BFCA processing the collection of Paulin S. Vieyra, a Senegalese filmmaker who pioneered the development of African cinema during the decolonization era of the 1960s. She also worked as a manuscripts processing assistant and a reading room attendant at the Lilly Library. She is particularly interested in reparative archival work, with the goal of uncovering the lives and stories told in the margins of preserved ephemera and making history accessible to everyone.