scholarly journals Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada by Alan Gordon

2017 ◽  
Vol 109 (2) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Jennifer Weymark
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Living History ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Living History Museum

The Walter Scott Experience

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Goode
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Living History ◽  
History Museum ◽  
Historical Reenactment ◽  
Colonial Williamsburg ◽  
Walter Scott ◽  
Living History Museum ◽  
Historical Fictions

Goode explores how Scott’s “potent historical fictions,” their “historically resigned but elegiac narrative of the Jacobite rebellions,” are deployed by Jefferson Davis, former President of the Southern Confederacy, to make sense of the “noble lost cause” of the American Civil War. For Goode, Scott’s own narrative “revivification” is best understood as an “ontological project of historical reenactment,” one that not only found resonance with apologists of the vanquished Confederacy but that is literalized in the long-running fantasy spectacle of the “living history museum” at “colonial” Williamsburg, Virginia.

Defining, Constructing, and Communicating Heritage at a "Living History" Museum: The Case of the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Beck
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Living History ◽  
First Person ◽  
Cultural Meanings ◽  
History Museum ◽  
The Village ◽  
Living History Museum

The Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, an open‐air, living history museum, provides a case study of how heritage is defined and presented. Drawing on David Lowenthal’s conception as heritage as a social construction and Diane Barthel’s idea of “symbolic bankers”, this paper explores how the Village has defined heritage and who has been involved in its definition. This paper will argue that the Village uses heritage to promote the cultural identity of the Ukrainian community while simultaneously strengthening Albertan pride and ‘nationalism’ through recognizing diversity and multiculturalism, but excludes the heritages of First Nations peoples and the other settler nations. The paper then evaluates the effectiveness of the Village’s attempts to portray history and communicate heritage considering the first‐person method of interpretation used and the involvement of the Alberta Government. The paper finds that the limitations of first‐person interpretation and the economic goals of the Alberta Government have led the Village to a position where it risks the trivialization of Ukrainian cultural meanings and the simplification and sanitization of Alberta’s historical narrative.

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