In Creating Colonial Williamsburg, Anders Greenspan examines the restoration and re-creation of the structures and gardens of Virginia's colonial capital beginning in 1926. The restoration was undertaken by the Rockefeller family, whose aim was to promote a twentieth-century appreciation for eighteenth-century ideals. Ironically, those ideals, including democracy, individualism, and representative government, were often promoted at the expense of a more complete understanding of the town's true history. The meaning and purpose of Colonial Williamsburg has changed over time, along with America's changing social and political landscapes, making the study of this historic site a unique and meaningful entry point to understanding the shifting modern American character. In recent years, financial struggles and declining attendance forced a new interpretation of the town, extending the presentation into the period of the American Revolution, while adding new interpretive approaches such as street theater and a greater emphasis on technology. Over its eighty-year history, says Greenspan, Colonial Williamsburg has grown and matured, while still retaining its emphasis on the importance of eighteenth-century values and their application in the modern world.

Detailed instructions and diagrams show how to make traditional colonial-style Christmas decorations.

Folklore has been described as the unwritten literature of a culture: its songs, stories, sayings, games, rituals, beliefs, and ways of life. Encyclopedia of American Folklore helps readers explore topics, terms, themes, figures, and issues related to this popular subject. This comprehensive reference guide addresses the needs of multiple audiences, including high school, college, and public libraries, archive and museum collections, storytellers, and independent researchers. Its content and organization correspond to the ways educators integrate folklore within literacy and wider learning objectives for language arts and cultural studies at the secondary level. This well-rounded resource connects United States folk forms with their cultural origin, historical context, and social function. Appendixes include a bibliography, a category index, and a discussion of starting points for researching American folklore. References and bibliographic material throughout the text highlight recently published and commonly available materials for further study. Coverage includes: Folk heroes and legendary figures, including Paul Bunyan and Yankee Doodle Fables, fairy tales, and myths often featured in American folklore, including "Little Red Riding Hood" and "The Princess and the Pea" American authors who have added to or modified folklore traditions, including Washington Irving Historical events that gave rise to folklore, including the civil rights movement and the Revolutionary War Terms in folklore studies, such as fieldwork and the folklife movement Holidays and observances, such as Christmas and Kwanzaa Topics related to folklore in everyday life, such as sports folklore and courtship/dating folklore Folklore related to cultural groups, such as Appalachian folklore and African-American folklore and more.

This book studies authenticity, which is a kind of truth to self, through the study of heritage tourism. When a heritage site is inauthentic, it leads to misinformation. Tourism scholars have been studying authenticity for about 50 years, and this book draws upon the theories and approaches of tourism studies to understand better misinformation, which has become a major topic of study since the US presidential elections in 2016. The book includes a discussion of common-sense and academic notions of authenticity, surveys a half century of scholarship on authenticity, and provides three case studies of heritage tourism sites: Lindsborg, KS (known as Little Sweden, USA), Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.

Constellations of a Contemporary Romanticism takes its title and point of departure from Walter Benjamin’s concept of the historical constellation, which puts both “contemporary” and “romanticism” in play as period designations and critical paradigms. Featuring fascinating and diverse contributions by an international roster of distinguished scholars working in and out of romanticism—from deconstruction to new historicism, from queer theory to postcolonial studies, from visual culture to biopolitics—this volume makes good on a central tenet of Benjamin’s conception of history: These critics “grasp the constellation” into which our “own era has formed with a definite earlier one.” Each of these essays approaches romanticism as a decisive and unexpired thought experiment that makes demands on and poses questions for our own time: What is the unlived of a contemporary romanticism? What has romanticism’s singular untimeliness bequeathed to futurity? What is romanticism’s contemporary “redemption value” for painting and politics, philosophy and film?

The surprising history of how Americans have fought over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution for nearly two and a half centuries Americans agree that their nation's origins lie in the Revolution, but they have never agreed on what the Revolution meant. For nearly two hundred and fifty years, politicians, political parties, social movements, and a diverse array of ordinary Americans have constantly reimagined the Revolution to fit the times and suit their own agendas. In this sweeping take on American history, Michael D. Hattem reveals how conflicts over the meaning and legacy of the Revolution--including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--have influenced the most important events and tumultuous periods in the nation's history; how African Americans, women, and other oppressed groups have shaped the popular memory of the Revolution; and how much of our contemporary memory of the Revolution is a product of the Cold War. By exploring the Revolution's unique role in American history as a national origin myth, Hattem shows how the meaning of the Revolution has never been fixed, how remembering the nation's founding has often done far more to divide Americans than to unite them, and how revising the past is an important and long‑standing American political tradition.

A revealing look at how and why we dress up for events from historical reenactments to Halloween, with an “engaging writing style and rich illustrations” (Choice). What does it mean to people around the world to put on costumes to celebrate their heritage, reenact historic events, assume a role on stage, or participate in Halloween or Carnival? Self-consciously set apart from everyday dress, costume marks the divide between ordinary and extraordinary settings and enables the wearer to project a different self or special identity. In this fascinating book, Pravina Shukla offers richly detailed case studies from the United States, Brazil, and Sweden to show how individuals use costumes for social communication and to express facets of their personalities. “Revelatory . . . a wide-ranging book bringing attention to clothing as part of festivals and folk heritage events, pop culture conventions and dramatic performances.” —Nuvo