Natália da Silva Perez works at the intersection of theatre, music, and academic research. She has just completed a joint PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Kent, with a dissertation about contemporary feminist stagings of texts written by women from the 16th and 17th centuries. Her current research project focuses on the everyday musical practices of women in borderlands communities. Natália is interested in questions of gender, social justice, ethics, culture, and history. Born in São Paulo, she has also lived and worked in Montreal, Brussels, Seville, Canterbury, and now she lives in Berlin.

Teaching Slot within the Summer School 2017:

The Nature of Historical Evidence: Challenges and Strategies

This 2-part series is a collaboration between Natália da Silva Perez and Natacha Klein Käfer. Drawing on their respective research projects, and on their ongoing conversations about historical methodology, they will discuss scholarly strategies to approach different types of historical evidence, from the planning phase to the final draft.

Part 1) Conducting a Research Project in the Archives
Dealing with primary sources is at the core of every historical research, but it is not
always an easy step. Historians constantly have to dig in manuscript and print
collections to find particular documents, or they must find ways to systematise and
analyse huge amounts of data on a particular subject. The first part of this workshop
will discuss tools, techniques, and challenges surrounding archival research, centred
in the following topics:

1. Sources, research questions, and reformulation of hypothesis;
2. Catalogues, databases, and digitisation;
3. How to deal with gaps, contextual evidence, and the unwritten parts of history.

Part 2) Conducting an Oral History Research Project
Behind any big historical narrative, there are always untold stories. The stories of
those without political power are often forgotten, as they rarely get the privilege to be
immortalized in the official archives. In this session, we will talk about Oral History as
a scholarly strategy that expands the idea of who can be a full historical subject. We
will touch upon the following topics:

1. Ethical considerations when conducting interviews;
2. Tensions between memory, objectivity, and historical evidence;
3. What kind of research project can benefit from an oral historical approach?

The Role of Musical Practices in the Everyday Lives of Displaced Women

During her stay at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Natália will work with interviews archived at the Oral History Division. She will listen to the testimonies of women who came from the American continent to live in Israel as they speak about their everyday engagement with music in diverse situations of displacement. In paying attention to individual narratives by women, her goal is to discover how individual strategies of belonging (or resisting belonging) might be performed through music, and how they might differ from what we find in more hegemonic explanations of the relationship between music and cultural identity.