archives@tulane.edu / Today Marie-Antoinette appears in the USA as a dazzling character. Propaganda from the French revolution compared her to the Chimera, and she indeed shares some traits with this mythological monster. Heterogeneous and composite, she is both a wicked queen and a tragic heroin. Media outlets invoke her name to criticize politicians and celebrities, while also painting her as a compassionate figure and paragon of feminism. A symbol of French luxury, Marie-Antoinette is a queen of fashion and a comparative tool for gauging contempt of the wealthiest. The historian, journalist or economist can seize upon one facet of her to offer a critical or benevolent personal view, thus creating a confused, contradictory, and sublime picture of her. Claiming that this use of her images distorts history, we will study the queen’s occurrence in modern USA in popular culture and scholarly works. A symbol of economic prosperity, she provides opposing guidelines for definitions of success. We will show that these factors come from a fictive figure, a Chimera in its definition of an unreal monster. We will then explore the different manifestations of the queen to understand where they originated, spotlighting New Orleans, where her image is particularly influential. We will also explore American and world images, showing how US medias and film industry influence the world’s understanding of the character. / 1 / Guillaume Tabet

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This thesis addresses reenactment and archival practice in the work of Sharon Hayes, a mid-career multi-media artist renowned for her use of archival documents to pose questions about history, politics, and speech. I do this through analyses of two of Hayes’s projects: the series In the Near Future (2005-2009) and a series of projects the artist refers to as “love addresses.” While these projects appropriate and repeat historical documents, Hayes’s work is especially interesting for the way it emphasizes difference over authenticity and explores the ways meaning shifts across temporal, geographic, and social contexts. In contrast to scholars who argue that Hayes’s practice is nostalgic and serves to decontextualize and depoliticize history, my thesis argues that the pedagogical aspects of Hayes’s work and her performative engagements with historical material are deeply political and contextual. My thesis demonstrates that Hayes’s distinctive contribution is to model historical agency and imagine alternative futures.

abstract: This thesis will examine how the Middle Ages are historically interpreted and portrayed in the United States. In order to keep this study within reasonable bounds, the research will exclude films, television, novels, and other forms of media that rely on the Pre-Modern period of European history for entertainment purposes. This thesis will narrow its focus on museums, non-profit organizations, and other institutions, examining their methods of research and interpretation, the levels of historical accuracy or authenticity they hold themselves to, and their levels of success. This thesis ultimately hopes to prove that the medieval period offers the same level of public interest as popular periods of American history. This focus on reenactment serves to illustrate the need for an American audience to form a simulated connection to a historical period for which they inherently lack geographic or cultural memory. The utilization of hyperreality as described by Umberto Eco lends itself readily to this historic period, and plays to the American desire for total mimetic immersion and escapism. After examining the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition of medieval history as high art and culture, the thesis focuses on historical reenactment, as it offers a greater level of visitor interaction, first by analyzing R.G. Collingwood’s definition of “reenactment” and it’s relation to the modern application in order to establish it as a veritable academic practice. The focus of the thesis then turns to the historical interpretation/reenactment program identified here as historical performance, which uses trained actors in controlled museum conditions to present historically accurate demonstrations meant to bring the artifacts on display to simulated life. Beginning with the template first established by the Royal Armories Museum in the United Kingdom, a comparative study utilizing research and interviews highlights the interpretative methods of the Frazier History Museum, and those of the Higgins Armory Museum. By comparing both museum’s methods, a possible template for successfully educating the American public about the European Middle Ages; while a closer examination of the Frazier Museum’s survival compared to the Higgins Armory’s termination may illustrate what future institutions must do or avoid to thrive. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2015

Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka hur autenticitet konstrueras i en nätgemenskap som bland annat ägnar sig åt att återskapa historiska kläder. Gruppen heter Vi som syr medeltidskläder och återfinns på Facebook. Konversationerna mellan medlemmar i gruppen analyseras med en netnografisk metod. Det teoretiska ramverket för undersökningen består av en konstruktivistisk syn på autenticitet, subkulturellt och socialt kapital, kategorier, dikotomier och formella och informella hierarkier.Undersökningen visar, bland annat, att autenticitet konstrueras genom konversationer mellan medlemmar i gruppen som har högt subkulturellt kapital och står högt upp i den informella hierarkin, med stöd av medlemmar högt upp i den formella hierarkin. Resultaten visar också att medlemmar med högt subkulturellt kapital ofta har en relation till museum och universitet och att dessa institutioner påverkar konstruktionen av det autentiska även här. Vidare visar undersökningen att synen på det autentiska utkristalliseras i gruppen, vilket leder till att medlemmar tvingas skapa eller gå med i nya, liknande grupper om deras syn inte stämmer överens med gruppens. / The aim of this study is to examine how authenticity is constructed in a group on the internet focusing on replicating historical clothes. The group is called Vi som syr medeltidskläder and is located on Facebook. The conversations between the members of the group is analysed with a netnographic method. The theoretical frame of the investigation is a constructive view on authenticity, subcultural and social capital, categories, dichotomies and formal and informal hierarchies. The investigation shows, among other things, that authenticity is constructed through conversations between members in the group with high subcultural capital, high up in the informal hierarchy with support from members with a place high up in the formal hierarchy. The results also show that the members with high subcultural capital often have a connection to museums and universities and that these places are related to the construction of authenticity even here. Further the investigation shows that the view on authenticity in the group is crystallizing, causing members to create or join new, similar groups if their view does not correspond to the view in the rest of the group.

In today’s history teaching in Sweden, role-play and historical re-enactment receive little attention. Even though many students find history as a subject boring and irrelevant, very little is done to improve the mode of teaching. My theses is that this could be done by presenting new ways of teaching and at the same time find a way to make more students interested in history. The main aim is to investigate if there are ways to offer students an experience of history by carrying out different interactive exercises with a touch of roleplay and historical recreation. In this essay, three exercises of that type have been constructed based on how historical role-plays have been used at museums and historical centres, the opinions of people who are engaged in re-enactment and living history, and on the curriculum for the Swedish upper level secondary school. The three exercises (a role-play exercise, a lecture by an invited re-enactor, and a theme week) have been analysed by four teachers who teach at upper level secondary school and high school. They responded very positively to the exercises, and judged the exercises to be fully viable in a classroom context. In conclusion, there are ways to implement re-enactment and role-play in history education to make the teaching more varied and interesting for the pupils. I argue that history is something you have to experience if you are to understand its full extent.

The paper focuses on the possibilities and potential of connecting live performance with new media. Our attempt is to find alternative strategies for theatre/performance relations with media, in this case digital media, by means of placing the theatre/performance within contemporary art production, developing strategies of production, which is developing a culture of usage. “In this new form of culture, which one might call a culture of use or a culture of activity, the artwork functions as the temporary terminal of a network of interconnected elements, like a narrative that extends and reinterprets preceding narratives.” [Nicolas Bourriaud: Postproduction, New York 2002] The project we are going to introduce is based on collaborative research, in which artistic and scientific approaches overlap and fuse.

The paper focuses on the possibilities and potential of connecting live performance with new media. Our attempt is to find alternative strategies for theatre/performance relations with media, in this case digital media, by means of placing the theatre/performance within contemporary art production, developing strategies of production, which is developing a culture of usage. “In this new form of culture, which one might call a culture of use or a culture of activity, the artwork functions as the temporary terminal of a network of interconnected elements, like a narrative that extends and reinterprets preceding narratives.” [Nicolas Bourriaud: Postproduction, New York 2002] The project we are going to introduce is based on collaborative research, in which artistic and scientific approaches overlap and fuse.

In this paper I will analyze the film, Whistling Dixie, as it relates to filmmaking principles such as: development, pre-production, production, and post-production. After evaluating all these aspects of the film, I will then make conclusions based on goals I had and how successful or unsuccessful I was in reaching these goals. I will include notes from unbiased audience members in evaluating this film.

This Thesis is concerned with how history is narrated in two selected works by the British artists, Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller. Chapter one considers Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (2001), a reenactment of a violent miners' strike against Margaret Thatcher's government in 1984-1985. The reenactment brought together reenactment hobbyist and ex-miners to perform the events at Orgreave and created a discourse around the imagined historical role of the working classes. Chapter two examines Dean's book Teignmouth Electron (1999), which recounts the failed voyage of Donald Crowhurst, one of the contestants of the 1967 Golden Globe Race who committed suicide after developing 'time-madness' at sea. She offers the history of this individual as a point of entry into middle-class aspirations in England in the 1960s. Produced at the turn of the 21st century when Britain's New Labour government was instigating an image of a New Britain to match its bygone glory, both works look back to moments in the past that epitomize the decline of the country's old order. Unearthing instances of failure and defeat, each artist offers an alternative glance at Britain's past and present condition than the one promoted by New Labour.