My name is River Starliper and I'm in my final year of Museum Studies here at RIT. My thesis seeks to research and understand participatory living history exercises based on a specific (albeit nontraditional) example: welcome to the realm of alcohol and general debauchery, the Renaissance Faire is in town!
If you've never been to a Renaissance Faire (typically just called Renn Faires or any other variation of the spelling), you may be surprised to find that the "Renaissance" in question is based more on fantasy and fairgoer-culture than any real-life time period. But these Faires still act as an exercise in participatory living history, in which costumed interpreters guide visitors through a setting that exists apart from the modern world. These Faires do not so much attract the hobbyist historian as they attract hippies, costumers, day-drinkers, witches, and generally those who consider themselves a part of some form of counter-culture.
My paper aims to examine the relationship between informal (and, in some cases, inaccurate) re-enactment and more formal "living history" or "museum" educational modalities. This research examines alternative methods of "meaning-making" for museum and Faire visitors, and explores how even experiences that are not "historically accurate" can provide valuable educational insights about a topic, time period, or cultural phenomenon.
This is a project born out of personal interest that has morphed into (at least, for me) an interesting conversation on how we learn about the past.
Stay tuned as I continue my journey into new academic depths. Forsooth!
Pictured: Myself (left) & friends in homemade costumes outside of the 2023 Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair
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