The New History in an Old Museum: Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg / Edition 1

by Richard Handler

Overview

The New History in an Old Museum is an exploration of "historical truth" as presented at Colonial Williamsburg. More than a detailed history of a museum and tourist attraction, it examines the packaging of American history, and consumerism and the manufacturing of cultural beliefs. Through extensive fieldwork-including numerous site visits, interviews with employees and visitors, and archival research-Richard Handler and Eric Gable illustrate how corporate sensibility blends with pedagogical principle in Colonial Williamsburg to blur the lines between education and entertainment, patriotism and revisionism.
During much of its existence, the "living museum" at Williamsburg has been considered a patriotic shrine, celebrating the upscale lifestyles of Virginia's colonial-era elite. But in recent decades a new generation of social historians has injected a more populist and critical slant to the site's narrative of nationhood. For example, in interactions with museum visitors, employees now relate stories about the experiences of African Americans and women, stories that several years ago did not enter into descriptions of life in Colonial Williamsburg. Handler and Gable focus on the way this public history is managed, as historians and administrators define historiographical policy and middle-level managers train and direct front-line staff to deliver this "product" to the public. They explore how visitors consume or modify what they hear and see, and reveal how interpreters and craftspeople resist or acquiesce in being managed. By deploying the voices of these various actors in a richly textured narrative, The New History in an Old Museum highlights the elements of cultural consensus that emerge from this cacophony of conflict and negotiation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822319740
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	07/17/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.58(d)
Lexile:	1420L (what's this?)

About the Author

Richard Handler is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia.

Eric Gable is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Mary Washington College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

1. The New History in an Old Museum 3

2. Imag[in]ing Colonial Williamsburg 28

3. Why History Changes, or, Two Theories of History Making 50

4. Just the Facts 78

5. Social History on the Ground 102

6. The Company Line: Aspects of Corporate Culture at Colonial Williamsburg 125

7. The Front Line: Smile Free or Die 170

8. Picket Lines 208

9. The Bottom Line 220

Notes 237

Works Cited 249

Index 258

Editorial Reviews

"A study quite unlike anything I've ever seen: in its depth of research, breadth of conception, theoretical sophistication, and incisiveness of judgment, it seems to me unmatched."--Peter Novick, University of Chicago

"In this impressive ethnography of Williamsburg, Handler and Gable take us behind the scenes and show us the roles of professional historians, front-line interpreters, corporate officials, and service workers in shaping the portrait of eighteenth-century Virginia that is presented. I know of no other book that presents such a complete and complex portrait of the museum as a social, economic, and cultural institution."--Roy Rosenzweig, George Mason University

From the Publisher

[Handler and Gable] prove that for all the flash and smoke of the 'culture wars,' for all the radical claims of the new historians and the vicious backlash of their detractors, 'social history has hardly had the kind of insurgent effect its critics claim for it.'...Lively and critical.

Village Voice

This study goes beyond the scope of most museum research (which seeks to determine the messages that are communicated to visitors), and that is what is most interesting about the book. The New History in an Old Museum explores the museum itself as a multifaceted social system that constructs its own values and transmits those values through its interpretive programs.

Winterthur Portfolio

Both useful and provocative, this study subjects America's largest and most celebrated history museum to the sometimes disquieting scrutiny of two professional ethnographers.

American Historical Review

Handler and Gable elude the trap that snares most scholars of American culture by refusing to view Williamsburg's version of the American past either as dictated by some nefarious conspiracy that controls the historic site, or by the consumers who pay to visit it....[A] sophisticated account of how a cacophony of voices adds up to little more than white noise.

In These Times

Readers of this study will find new insights into the inner workings of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and they will learn more about the choices history museums must make to remain viable as both educational institutions and places of entertainment.

Virginia Libraries

Examining the production of history at such an important organization is a project well worth undertaking, and the authors offer rich insights into the process.

Journal of Southern History

The New History in an Old Museum offers an unusually detailed portrait of how historical narratives are produced at one popular and influential site for public memory.

Cultural Anthropology

This is an important book about an urgent topic....This book establishes that as long as politeness and civility are the primary values to be met by visitors at an outdoor history museum, there is no possibility that a critical or reflexive history can be taught....Handler and Gable allow us to see that Colonial Williamsburg is a corporation that provides admission to graciousness. Normally, shrines sell admission to Grace. The authors also show that if Williamsburg is a shrine to America's founding ideals, then its own historians argue, these must include slavery, racism, and class....Handler and Gable argue from large amounts of internal data that Williamsburg cannot be a lesson in reality. But they do think the museum can be reformed to achieve its goals.

American Anthropologist

Richard Handler and Eric Gable deserve plaudits for a provocative analysis of America's archetypal historic site and for exploring the gulf that separates the aspirations of its historians-curators from the everyday realities of interpreting a slice of the past for everyday audiences.

William and Mary Quarterly

[A] great contribution to the cause of a history that matters. The authors earnestly contend for presentations of the past to make a difference to the politics of our world through socially engaged history for a mass public. Handler and Gable challenge reflection on these issues with their set of close ethnographic studies of interpretive operations for visitors at Williamsburg, and their accounts-alternately historical and ethnographic-of the corporate management of these activities and the persons who deliver them. Their insights into the forms of controlling hegemony at work are strong and disturbing....Handler and Gable's arresting insights are supported by a fine set of vividly presented narratives of episodes and reports of interviews, as well as by very perceptive commentaries.

Public Historian

Drawing on intensive fieldwork conducted in 1990 and 1991, the authors explore the internal politics of the museum and its foundation and conclude that the record is decidedly mixed.

Chronicle of Higher Education

In the late 1960s, social historians emerged with a fervent desire to write history that included populations other than elite, white males. The collision of this objective with the "entrenched" hegemonic values and the equally difficult clash between commercialism and education at Colonial Williamsburg, is the focus of this accessible and, frequently, engaging book. According to Handler, professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia, and Gable, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Mary Washington College, the broad ambition to merge critical inquiry with corporate values such as visitor comfort and market share was bound to fail: in contextualizing, interpreting, updating or making palatable the known facts of history, how much of it is left behind? What makes this book more than an able, academic study is the authors' ear for the irreverent phrase (they include the term "Republican Disneyland," which insiders applied to the site, more than once) and also their use of employee voices to give behind-the-scenes accounts. Especially welcome is an account by a master cooper, who represents a blue-collar segment which, like the slaves, historians too often have overlooked. When Handler and Gable were conducting on-site fieldwork in the early 1990s, one corporate executive predicted that any study they might write would be "fiction." This well-written book is not fiction, as the extensive footnotes attest. Rather, it provides valuable insights into how history is presented and why the best intentions go awry. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In the past decade the staff of Colonial Williamsburg has attempted to incorporate the methodology of the new social history into its interpretive program. This change meant involving the "real" people of Colonial Williamsburgblacks, women, and the lower class. Handler (anthropology, Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville) and Gable (sociology and anthropology, Mary Washington Coll.) apply an "ethnographic" model to analyze this change at the museum. The scope of their researchwhich consisted of countless visits to the museum, observation of activities, and extensive research in museum archivesis truly amazing, and the result is a fascinating book but with some limitations. The authors have done a great service in breaking down disciplinary barriers, but they sometimes fail to recognize that their readers may not be familiar with their categories or vocabulary. A good work for social scientists, historians, and those in museums.Charles K. Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.

Library Journal