Method Acts is an annual series of events exploring alternative and non-traditional research methods used by graduate students and emerging scholars in architectural history and adjacent fields. Organized by the Society of Architectural Historians Graduate Student Advisory Committee (GSAC), we aim to create a forum for discussing reconsidered, interdisciplinary methodological approaches to interpreting histories of built environments and material culture.
Research methods and practices are political. The scope, subject, mode of address, the accessibility of evidence, and the researcher’s orientation all condition our encounters with the events and objects we study. As architectural historians in the early phase of our careers, we have the opportunity to orient our field toward broader forms of engagement with material evidence. How can we research when archives are unavailable, non-existent, or inaccessible? How can we retain the ambition to construct an inclusive global architectural history? As we continue to realign our research towards engaged, activist, and decolonized methods, we seek opportunities to continue shaping a more inclusive disciplinary field.
We seek to confront questions of methodology head-on and consider how our methods might help reconsider the received architectural historiography and its disciplinary boundaries. In rethinking how we relate to the subjects of our research and to each other when discussing our scholarship, our ambition is to foster a more horizontally organized space within SAH for emerging scholars to discuss methods.
There will be two 90-minute workshops on Tuesday, February 27, 3:00 PM CST and Tuesday, March 12, 3:00 PM CST for the speakers to present and discuss their work. A 90-minute roundtable is scheduled for Monday, March 25, 10:00 AM CST, where invited scholars known for their research in the field will share their perspectives on methodology. This third event in the series will highlight how methods are implemented as a body of scholarly work advances over the course of one’s career.
You can
read the abstracts/presentation notes in advance to be ready to discuss.
Method Acts is organized by SAH Graduate Students Advisory Committee members, Lisa Beyeler-Yvarra, Sylvia Faichney, Sben Korsh, Mania Taher, and Charlette Caldwell.
