Practice × Theory Sessions: Practice as Research

What does it mean to practice within an academic institution? How do artistic, improvisational, and embodied forms of work generate knowledge that does not always take the form of text, argument, or method?

This session brings together musicians, artists, and scholars to explore practice as a mode of research. Through performance, conversation, and shared reflection, participants will consider how practices of making, listening, rehearsal, and collaboration function as forms of inquiry—shaping how questions are posed, how knowledge is produced, and how learning takes place.

Rather than assuming a fixed boundary between theory and practice, the session treats their interaction as an active site of experimentation. It invites participants to reflect on how practice operates within, alongside, and sometimes against academic structures, and how artistic work can open alternative ways of thinking, teaching, and researching across disciplines.

Guests:
Ben Holtzman, Patricia Alessandrini.

Graduate Student Presenters:
Jelani Surpris, Sofia Smith, Zippy Monaghan-Bergson

Guest presentations and graduate student presentations followed by open conversation with all attendees.

Moderators:
Isaac Roth Blumfield, Madeline Phuong

This event will also be livestreamed via Zoom. Zoom link will be available via Eventbrite RSVP.