In this talk, Miller-Likhethe will discuss major interdisciplinary debates on archival research practices for Global Studies and Black diaspora studies. The talk is divided into two sections. In the first section, she will discuss two contemporary art exhibitions that she recently curated on themes of Black spirituality, internationalism, and political imaginaries as an extension of global studies research and an attempt to redress the silences in the archive. The second section builds on this analysis to consider how literary analysis can enrich and accentuate studies of the Black radical tradition by reframing debates about political education and print culture. Miller-Likhethe will theorize modes of diasporic readership through the literature of the Jamaican communist and literary giant Claude McKay’s novel Banjo. Banjo must be read in part as an extension of McKay’s political journalism and within his broader efforts to bridge Black nationalist and communist movements throughout the interwar period. Drawing on speculative and literary approaches to archival research, the article argues that the renewed emphasis on heterogeneity, ephemeral encounters, and place making depicted within Banjo can open up new lines of inquiry toward redressing the methodological challenges and textual silences surrounding the question of the audience and the study of radical print cultures within traditional archives.