Introduction
Public history is, in general, strongly related to questions of gender representation. Whenever history is displayed, performed or staged publicly along with a certain narrative about the past, gender is performed as well.1 The themes and aims of one history museum exhibition or historical performance might differ from another; however, gender roles, stereotypes, and the relationship between genders are always a crucial part of historical narratives (von Bose, 2012).
As highly institutionalized and rather static forms of public history, museums and historic sites have been analyzed regarding questions of how gender is displayed (Muttenthaler and Wonisch, 2006). Reenactment, however—understood as a form of self-organized, do-it- yourself approach to history—still awaits an in-depth analysis of how gender roles are (re)produced and represented, and how they affect the gender perceptions of the reenactors themselves and the audiences (Rambuscheck, 2016). Therefore, this chapter focuses on reenactment as a social practice, organized by groups and associations mostly outside of institutionalized contexts such as museums with their highly curated content. Thus far, for the most part, reenactment groups have attracted more men than women, and therefore, it is mostly battles and skirmishes or military combat and conflicts that have been considered worth staging (Jureit, 2020; Rambuscheck, 2016; Thompson, 2004). However, the overrepresentation of men among reenactors has been changing over the last two decades, and what started out as a male-dominated pastime has become somewhat more gender-inclusive (Weeks, 2015). With the general upswing of reenactment as a social practice, more women have become involved in reenacting. The chapter takes this observation as a starting point and inquires what it is like to be a female reenactor in a male-dominated environment. Female reenactors’ experiences in the hobby and their perspectives have so far been underrepresented in the nascent field of reenactment studies. Including a female point of view not only helps in fostering an understanding of the phenomenon of reenactment in a more general sense, but it also sheds light on how gender is being performed in this social practice beyond theDOI: 10.4324/9780429445668-14 assumption that reenactment idealizes and revalorizes masculinity (Hunt, 2008; Jureit, 2020).
This chapter operates with a narrow definition of historical reenactment, conceiving of it as a form of bodily immersion into an imagined version of the past which often supersedes more analytical approaches that relate to broader questions of historical context, i.e., processes on the macro level. While reenactment is often praised for its ability to stimulate a deeper reflection about history on a personal level, critics of reenactment fear that a dramatization of the past yields oversimplified, biased, and one-sided interpretations for the public (for an overview, see de Groot, 2011). Indeed, it is often easy for critics to identify aspects of the narrative that are staged differently from what the historical record indicates. Despite this criticism, reenactment’s specific qualities foster its impact in the public sphere, and reenactment not only has considerable public appeal but can trigger alternative processes of historical understanding and meaning-making. Hence, some scholars perceive of reenactment as a more “democratic enterprise” (Hall, 1994, p. 7) of representing the past that provides the potential to challenge established meanings or give voice to those who have so far not been part of a historical narrative (Davis, 2012). Spinning around the argument of reenactment as bottom-up and democratic, it could be claimed that those features of reenactment do not necessarily bring about a more tolerant, liberal, inclusive, or critical attitude toward history or the past (Engelke, 2017; Hochbruck, 2013). Including a female perspective on reenactment can help to develop this line of thought further, as female participation can be seen as a crucial case in point for undermining reenactment’s supposedly tolerant and bottom-up character. As I will show in this chapter, women’s participation is restricted and depends on the policy of the respective reenactment groups—a practice at odds with the perception of reenactment as a democratic enterprise. This leads to another crucial point: taking female perspectives into account reveals insights into one of the key concepts on which reenactment hinges—the construction of authenticity.