From Re- to Pre- and Back Again

Tracing the complex history of the term ‘reenactment’, back to R.G. Collingwood’s philosophy of history, on the one hand, and popular practices of war reenactments and living history museums, on the other, a survey of its current contribution in art and museum practices highlights the importance of historicity — a category the postmodern was supposed to have vacated — in a wide range of examples, from Rod Dickinson and Jeremey Deller to Alexandra Pirici, Manuel Pelmuş, and Milo Rau. Performance reenactments, in particular, are premised on performance art having become historical, but also threaten to digest history in favour of a mere productivist mobilization for the needs of current attention economies. An alternative could be the attempt to counter historical with dramatic time in order to unlock unrealized possibilities and futures, as the term preenactment promises.

The “living history” format as one of the most promising areas of museum development

What is the attraction of the “living history” format in the development of a modern museum? This article is devoted to this issue and an attempt is made to clarify the specific differences between living history museums and classical ones, focusing on the possibility of the former to “immerse” the visitor in the recreated cultural and historical space of a certain era. The experience of Russian living history museums shows that by implementing new programs aimed at interacting with visitors, museums perform not only their main function of collecting and preserving, but also contribute to the popularization and comprehensive study of historical and cultural heritage as well as solving educational tasks. The author of the article aims to acquaint the reader with the most effective and popular projects to activate museum activities in the Krasnodar territory and the Southern Urals. Master classes on various topics, traveling exhibitions, costumed performances, quests, and, finally, festivals of historical reconstruction are just some of the modern forms of interaction with visitors, which can serve as a basis for developing interactive educational programs. The relevance and prospects of the immersive format in museum activities are provided by the need to solve the problems of fostering the cultural and historical memory among young visitors, the most popular museum audience, and the younger generation’s interest in living history. The implementation of new forms of interaction with the audience will help museums not only attract a wide range of visitors, but also increase financial opportunities for development and become more competitive.

Epilogue

The epilogue contends that the book’s methodology politically challenges canons by taking seriously the media commentaries and medial savviness of genres and texts that tend to be denigrated as “derivative” on account of their secondary relationship to canonical texts. It then proposes that the markedly different medial afterlives that Walter Scott’s novels and Jane Austen’s novels have enjoyed in film and in fanfiction derive in part from differences in historical consciousness that their respective fictions promote. Whereas fanfiction has been medially hailed by Austen’s novels, Scott’s novels survive in the project of living history museums. The epilogue concludes with a reading of William Blake’s proverb “As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.”

Innovations in Teaching Adult Education: Living History Museums and Transformative Learning in the University Classroom

The difficult times in which we live require innovative, creative, and hopeful pedagogies of adult education. This article describes a nontraditional experiential, “empathy-invoking” approach to the teaching of a graduate course on the theory and research of adult learning. The approach begins with the building of a safe learning community, a familiar “knowledge curriculum,” and a structured syllabus with academic readings, small group discussions, student “theory-to-practice” facilitation of learning activities, and an academic mid-term paper. Both the teacher and students design and lead learning activities which elaborate, “unpack,” and critique readings, and develop students’ capacity for experiential, emotional, spiritual, arts-based, and bodily learning as well as group process, all the while reinforcing trust, deeper relationships, cooperation, and better knowledge of each others’ lives, personalities, capabilities, and identities. The class culminates in creative presentations where learners transform the classroom into “living history museums” representing the sites of adult learning they have investigated in field research. Visitors to living history museums engage in a rich array of informal adult learning; they gain new knowledge, participate in hands-on learning and role playing, and at times even experience transformative learning. In this class, the museum and its learning opportunities come into the classroom, and are created by learners themselves.

Doing Grassroots Public History

Grey Osterud completed Putting the Barn before the House: Women and Family Farming in Early Twentieth-Century New York, which was supported by the Prelinger Award, twenty years after her first study of gender and generational relationships in a rural community. This chapter reflects on the constraints and opportunities of being a public historian, as well as the dynamic connections between feminist activism and grassroots-oriented research and education programs. It traces Osterud’s trajectory from Boston’s Bread and Roses through living-history museums and labor union workshops to her current vocation as a freelance editor helping authors in African American and women’s history reach wider audiences.

A Tale of Two Missions

This paper is an examination of the use of Native content in two contrasting sites, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons in Midland, Ontario, and Skä•noñh–Great Law of Peace Center in Syracuse, New York. These two sites share a common history, not only as early French settlements, but also as living history museums established in the twentieth century to memorialize and celebrate seventeenth-century Jesuit missions. Revisiting them today reveals their transformation into two very different museum models, incorporating very different methods of presenting indigenous knowledge. The authors consider how two distinct narratives have evolved in the twenty-first century, and how public memory continues to shape visitor expectations. The paper adds to the conversation about museums’ continuing incorporation of diverse historical narratives into their interpretation and programming as well as a rethinking of the ways in which we produce history for public consumption.

Playing Victorian

The British heritage industry has long been a subject for debate in the UK, with critics arguing that heritage invests history with a nostalgic idealism that sanitizes and simplifies the nation’s past. This article examines Blists Hill Victorian Town, a British living history museum that purports to re-create everyday industrial life of the 1890s, within the context of these debates, arguing that Blists Hill portrays the late-Victorian period with more complexity than many critics would allow. Shifting the lens of how such sites have typically been evaluated—away from questions of authenticity, to instead focus on how living history museums engage visitors in meaningful play—I consider the ways that Blists Hill promotes creative learning through an imaginative, visceral engagement with history.