Kate Elswit
Dunham’s Data is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC AH/R012989/1, 2018-2022), under the direction of Kate Elswit (PI, University of London, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama) and Harmony Bench (CI, The Ohio State University). We are thrilled that our team — Bench, Elswit, Antonio Jimenez-Mavillard, and Tia-Monique Uzor — is recipient of the 2021 Award for Excellence in Digital Theatre and Performance Scholarship jointly given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education an
Dunham’s Data explores the kinds of questions and problems that make the analysis and visualization of data meaningful for dance history, through the case study of 20th century African American choreographer Katherine Dunham. We manually curate datasets from a large body of undigitized primary source print materials that Dunham herself chose to save, held by seven archives across the United States, which find meaning and expression in tandem with exploratory static and interactive data visualizations. These
Our team process of intentional data curation, analysis, and visualization is exploratory, iterative, and self-reflexive, guided by a commitment to humanistic scholarly argument. Our essays engage with both the underlying methodologies and the historical insights that emerge. The online project portfolio is designed as a wayfinder to draw connections between multi-modal outputs: datasets, interactive and static visualizations, datasets and user guides, and essays. We are also completing a limited-edition bo
Kate Elswit