Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry
- Submitting institution
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The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- KELS7
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
- The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
- Brief description of type
- A collection of creative and critical work
- Open access status
- -
- Month
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- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- Yes
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- ‘Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry’ lays the foundation for digital methods to analyze dance’s history of transnational circulation and for dance to model more complex approaches to bodies in the digital humanities. Taking place in three funded phases over seven years, the research inquiry develops through an extended process of manually curating datasets from a large body of primary source, undigitized materials held by seven archives across the United States, which finds meaning and expression in tandem with exploratory visualization. This multi-layered digital humanities practice further presents insights through peer-reviewed essays that make both critical historical and methodological interventions.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This multi-component output investigates the complex questions and problems that make the collection, analysis, and visualization of data meaningful for dance historical analysis. While digital research methods have impacted most humanities and arts disciplines, the field of dance studies has yet to fully identify how it can benefit from these analytic approaches, which also limits its participation in ongoing interdisciplinary conversations.
Across the three phases of work are a core set of concerns regarding the ways in which digital methods are particularly suited to accounting for the scale and distribution of information necessary to better understand the translation, circulation, and transmission of dance. We therefore combine methodological approaches from the interpretive humanities with others drawn from data analysis and the digital humanities. The core of the research sits on the foundation of a creative and curatorial ‘digital humanities practice’ that contributes to an understanding of how digital humanities can both address and open up intellectual and methodological problems that matter to us as dance scholars. The inquiry develops through an iterative process of manually curating datasets, crafted from undigitized materials held by seven archives across the United States, which finds meaning and expression in tandem with exploratory visualization. At the same time as this practice supports all written components, we also argue that it manifests as research in itself that depends on a deep engagement with and interpretation of archival materials.
Earlier seed-funded phases of the project (2014–16 and 2016–18) laid the foundation for the ongoing third phase, which is supported by a three-year AHRC Research Grant (2018–21, AH/R012989/1). Although the research is ongoing, interest has been significant, resulting in nine invited talks at the time of writing. All datasets and print publications since 2016 are equally co-authored by Harmony Bench and Kate Elswit.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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