Maybe it's Halloween coming up, but help me out here;
I had a sudden idea taking a shower this afternoon (yes, that was correct... it's my day off). The university where I am now teaching is reorganizing into a structure intended to really push interdisciplinarity (that's people from different fields collaborating, to translate the academic-speak). I need to develop a work plan with my program chair and having some sort of interdisciplinary "cluster" project would be a major plus (yes, that's what they're calling it, and yes... I know...).
I'm a medieval historian and my dissertation was on Christianization, which doesn't lend itself to the interdisciplinary aspect very well (especially in the absence of a religious studies program), and isn't activating my enthusiasm (academically) like it did when I defended the dissertation ten years ago. I'm looking for something new to do. The kind of projects they want could entail both research on my part with components of teaching and co-curricular student projects.
So my mind is wandering and it drifts across the question of what I should propose in the work plan, and I'm thinking about my daughter's enthusiasm for Comicon cosplay, and that I was a theater studies undergrad, and my surprise to learn in a recent reading that already in medieval times people would dress up as King Arthur characters, which resembles modern Renaissance Faires, which themselves have a 19th century precedent...
And suddenly it all came together; "Impersonation: a history of not being yourself."
So what I'm throwing out to the TB hive mind, just to see what the net catches, is an invitation to tell me about all the instances of this kind of thing you can think of. I'm brainstorming a bunch myself but there are probably some that wouldn't occur to me. Also any resources, books, websites, anything you know of that I could use to start researching and coming up with teaching material.
For now I'm setting aside theater and movies, where there's alternate-world "acting" going on. That's probably relevant to the project but is a whole sphere to itself. What I'm more interested in is ritual and play, instances where people dress up and behave to personify characters without a formal separation from their "real life" identities.
Things that come to mind:
Chivalric dress-up at medieval jousts, Victorian medievalisms and modern Renaissance Faires
Society for Creative Anachronism
Religious (e.g. Shamanistic) personification of gods or spirits in ritual
Carnevale/Mardi Gras/Fasching
Halloween
Children's dress-up play and costume parties
Historical re-enactors, both amateur societies and as professional tourist-attractions (e.g. Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg)
ComiCon Cosplay and LARPing.
Masqued balls
Glam rockers? KISS, David Bowie, GWAR?
Role play as a psychological/therapeutic/instructional method
I could see developing a series of articles or book on all this, collaborating with faculty from theater, psychology, or anthropology, teaching a class, and a student project that might entail both studying some of these things in modern society and maybe putting on such an event of their own.
Ideas? Hit me!
I had a sudden idea taking a shower this afternoon (yes, that was correct... it's my day off). The university where I am now teaching is reorganizing into a structure intended to really push interdisciplinarity (that's people from different fields collaborating, to translate the academic-speak). I need to develop a work plan with my program chair and having some sort of interdisciplinary "cluster" project would be a major plus (yes, that's what they're calling it, and yes... I know...).
I'm a medieval historian and my dissertation was on Christianization, which doesn't lend itself to the interdisciplinary aspect very well (especially in the absence of a religious studies program), and isn't activating my enthusiasm (academically) like it did when I defended the dissertation ten years ago. I'm looking for something new to do. The kind of projects they want could entail both research on my part with components of teaching and co-curricular student projects.
So my mind is wandering and it drifts across the question of what I should propose in the work plan, and I'm thinking about my daughter's enthusiasm for Comicon cosplay, and that I was a theater studies undergrad, and my surprise to learn in a recent reading that already in medieval times people would dress up as King Arthur characters, which resembles modern Renaissance Faires, which themselves have a 19th century precedent...
And suddenly it all came together; "Impersonation: a history of not being yourself."
So what I'm throwing out to the TB hive mind, just to see what the net catches, is an invitation to tell me about all the instances of this kind of thing you can think of. I'm brainstorming a bunch myself but there are probably some that wouldn't occur to me. Also any resources, books, websites, anything you know of that I could use to start researching and coming up with teaching material.
For now I'm setting aside theater and movies, where there's alternate-world "acting" going on. That's probably relevant to the project but is a whole sphere to itself. What I'm more interested in is ritual and play, instances where people dress up and behave to personify characters without a formal separation from their "real life" identities.
Things that come to mind:
Chivalric dress-up at medieval jousts, Victorian medievalisms and modern Renaissance Faires
Society for Creative Anachronism
Religious (e.g. Shamanistic) personification of gods or spirits in ritual
Carnevale/Mardi Gras/Fasching
Halloween
Children's dress-up play and costume parties
Historical re-enactors, both amateur societies and as professional tourist-attractions (e.g. Plimoth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg)
ComiCon Cosplay and LARPing.
Masqued balls
Glam rockers? KISS, David Bowie, GWAR?
Role play as a psychological/therapeutic/instructional method
I could see developing a series of articles or book on all this, collaborating with faculty from theater, psychology, or anthropology, teaching a class, and a student project that might entail both studying some of these things in modern society and maybe putting on such an event of their own.
Ideas? Hit me!
