This study utilizes a multi-disciplinary approach in order to interrogate the hidden history and performances of violence, masculinity and nationhood within the hobby of Civil War reenacting in the United States.  Utilizing participant observation, interviews, and the archive, this project documents the early history of the hobby and the federal government sponsorship of enactments of violence and concludes with the (re)tellings of (re)enacted battles by the hobbyists themselves.

 

Civil War reenacting has a rich history that up until now has been clouded by popular cultural artifacts such as Ken Burns' documentary and Tony Horowitz's Confederates in the Attic.  Despite the notion that the hobby boomed due to the burgeoning interest in the Civil War after the publication of these texts in the 1990’s, Civil War reenactments have been performed as early as several years after the conclusion of the war, with a massive undertaking sponsored by the American federal government and military for the 100th anniversary of the major battles.  This government sponsorship and sanctioning of enacted violence does not appear in the literature of the hobby and this study will remedy the omission of this critical episode in American commemorative performance.

 

Complementing the history of reenacting is the performative analysis of the hobby and the objectification of the past inherent in the staging. In order to understand the hobby, a nuanced depiction of those who reenact and the reenactments themselves is presented.    Whether reenactors take to the battlefield to commemorate the service of others, or to fulfill the fantasy of military service, or to recoup the opportunity to serve, by parsing their service on the enacted battlefield, this study of the hobby presents the entangled “vortices of behavior” which allow for the reenactors to perform versions of themselves in military roles.

 

Come back and visit as this study grows, shifts and continues to defy traditional academic disciplines.  

 

Latest addition: Commemory - an author-created concept that blends memory studies, performance theory, and haunting to (re)tell the (his)story of reenactments.