Methodologies Dialogue Archives and Embodiments

In this conversation, Adrian Curtin, Prarthana Purkayastha, and meLê yamomo highlight how their research on sound and dance engages embodied knowledges and vice versa. They account for how archival work challenges presumptions about the research process as well as what the scholar assumes they are looking for in the archive. The research process demands flexibility because studying performance invites interpretation, adaptation, and cultural understanding as intermediaries in understanding archival materials. Each participant emphasizes how, for them, research processes have incorporated creative endeavours because of the embodied and artistic dimensions of performance and historiographic analysis.