Curating Italian Renaissance Research Papers: Preserving Secondary Sources for Future Research
(Nena Couch, Rachelle Tsachor)

With the passing in this new century of some of our pioneer dance historians such as Ingrid Brainard, Barbara Sparti, Julia Sutton, and Wendy Hilton, researchers are faced with the loss of a generation of knowledge transmitted directly through conferences, teaching, and personal contact. When those dance scholars or their designees have made institutional arrangements for their scholarly legacies, we have the opportunity to make their personal perspectives – beyond publication, presentation, performance, and teaching – available more widely to future researchers through preservation and access to their scholarly working papers. These papers may contain a wide variety of the kinds of materials that have led to the scholar's published works, but which may reveal the dance scholarly process as well as hold unpublished materials and ideas.
Based on the presenters' experience in curating Julia Sutton's research papers, this poster considers research papers as an inroad into scholarly thinking, looks at scholars as role models of deep understanding or as landmarks of research into Renaissance dance, and explores the ways in which we value and curate foundational scholars' thinking, research practices, and decision-making models. The practice of preserving scholarly papers, the curatorial decisions that must be made in evaluating papers for accession, and the role of the special collections library/archive in honoring the achievements of past scholars and at the same time making those papers accessible for new scholarship are placed in the larger context of the importance of scholarly papers in the record of historical dance research.

Nena Couch, Columbus, Ohio, USA:

Nena Couch (BA, MM George Peabody College; MLS Vanderbilt University) is Head, Thompson Library Special Collections, Curator of the Theatre Research Institute and Professor, Ohio State University. Publications include "Dance in La dama boba" (Comedia Performance), "Choreography and Cholera: The Extended Life of Dance Notation" (A Tyranny of Documents), and others. Awards include the Harvard Rothschild Fellowship for Research in Dance, and the Theatre Library Association Distinguished Service in Performing Arts Librarianship Award. She serves on the board of the Dance Heritage Coalition. 

Rachelle Tsachor, Chicago, Illinois, USA:

Rachelle Palnick Tsachor (BFA Juilliard; MA, CUNY; CMA); is Assistant Professor of Theatre Movement, at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her historical dance publications include chapters in Dover's Courtly Dance of the Renaissance; Gordon & Breach's Moving Notation and the Institute for Historical Dance Practice's Terpsichore 1450-1900. Her reconstruction of Nido d'Amore was the basis for Dancetime's video The Majesty of Renaissance Dance. Tsachor was associate editor of Dances for the Sun King: André Lorin's Livre de Contredance. She researches the bodily expression of emotions with Dr. Tal Shafir.