Theatres of Battle, Battles of Meaning: Meanings and Historical Representations of Civil War Reenactment.

Civil War reenacting consumes the time, money, efforts, and imaginations of all those who don the uniform of the fallen soldier. Unlike some avocations, however, the efforts of reenactment participants evoke historical concerns bearing more social significance than a mere pastime. The reliving of this pivotal event in our country?s history brings to light a number of social issues our society is grappling with in modern times. Questions of the individual in modernity, historical representation, and race and gender relations all manifest themselves in the theatre of the reenacting battlefield. To date, most research on Civil War reenacting has been done by academics in the arenas of folklore and cultural studies. This paper attempts to rectify the lack of research placing reenactment in a sociological context. The research explores the meanings of reenactment for the participant, as well as the crises of historical representation along race and gender lines occurring in the arena. Qualitative methods are used to examine the topic; participant observation at a battle reenactment and four in-depth interviews with reenactors have been conducted for the research thus far (interviews and participant observations are ongoing, however). A theoretical framework of collective memory to examine Civil War reenacting is utilized, while acknowledging emergent themes manifested in the data. Historian Alon Confino?s assertion that the past is constructed as myth to serve a particular community, a past which individuals are committed to constructing to sanctify community and individual meanings, is discussed in the context of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]