PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
RELATED TOPICS
- Museums/Exhibits
- Reflections on the Field
- Theory in Practice
ABSTRACT
This proposal seeks to help answer the question ‘what is reenactment?’ It does this by investigating past meanings of the word. The historical investigation draws on evidence from historical encyclopedias and dictionaries, texts written by public historians, the Google Books corpus, as well as from a lexicometric frequency analysis. It traces the emergence and development of different meanings of the term, which often correlates to large scale commemorations (such as the Bicentennial of the US Revolution), and shows an exponential growth in use of the term from the 1980s onwards. It finds that currently, the terms ‘reenactment’ and ‘living history’ are used interchangeably to describe two different phenomena.
DESCRIPTION
This proposal seeks to facilitate and engage a debate on how public historians should handle the ambiguity in terminology described in the abstract by providing a reconceptualization of the term, based on its historical usage, and by providing contextual evidence for how the term is being used in the public – so that public historians can most successfully communicate with their audiences. The author would like to find others who are either interested in presenting on the topic of Reenactment or Living History, or others who seek to reflect on the field and how it conceptualizes of the activities which it performs to its audiences. As such, the author is open to working with both academics and practitioners on a panel. The talk can be delivered both with a PowerPoint presentation and without and is open to any and all panel formats.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:
Koloman Marschik, New York University, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
I think this is a really interesting idea. Whenever I think about re-definitions of reenactment, I think of the artist Dread Scott and his rearticulation of the 1811 German Coast uprising. I think it might be worth reaching out to him:https://www.dreadscott.net/
This is an interesting topic. I don’t know that the definition of reenactment is as important as its relevance today. How can it be used most effectively? How does it connect to museum theater? Some of the museums near Providence doing reenactment type interpretation are Plimoth Patuxet Museums and Old Sturbridge Village. Colonial Williamsburg was a pioneer in reenactment as theater which is an important perspective to include in the discussion.
As someone who does living history and often corrects what most of the public understands as reenactment and their perceptions of reenactors, I think this would be a great conversation to have with someone from ALHFAM or reach out to the Slave Dwelling Project and its cadre of living historians to talk about those definitions and how it impacts the work they do. I think most people think about reenactment as theatre and done by hobbyist, but do not realize that there are historians and hobbyists involved and that there is a bit of nuance to each group. I’d love to see this with a few diverse voices as the experience definitely varies depending on identity.