Reactions to Handler and Roth

Today’s readings were Stacy Roth’s Past into Present and Richard Handler and Eric Gable’s The New History in an Old Museum. Both texts are about ways of teaching history. Handler’s text focuses more on a scholarly anthropological study on new ways of teaching history at Colonial Williamsburg. In the first chapter of the book, he goes into detail about how up until the 1970s Colonial Williamsburg offered a glossed over view of colonial life. It focused mainly on white upper class males. Handler mentions that after the political and social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, people no longer wanted to see this idealized version and wanted to see a more accurate portrayal of life for all people, not just the advantaged ones. The current way that history is taught at Colonial Williamsburg now includes the negative aspects of colonial history more than it used to. Handler and Gable’s text is an outside study on reenactments. It looks at reenactments from a scholarly perspective instead of actually going into the methods used by reenactors.

Roth’s text looks at reenactments from a different perspective. Her book focuses on the methods used by the reenactors themselves. If Handler’s book is an outside view, hers is an inside view. She discusses methods such as first-person reenactments and third-person reenactments and the advantages and disadvantages to both. Her text is less of a critical study on how history is portrayed and more of a discussion on what reenactments are and can do. While both texts are of great value, I found Roth’s to be more entertaining to read. I though learning about the methods of reenactments more interesting than a scholarly critique of Colonial Williamsburg.