Re-enactment Workshops Report

The Re-enactment workshops were funded by the National Institute for Humanities and Creative Arts and the Humanities Research Centre in partnership with CalTec and Vanderbilt.

The workshops were held on 9-10 May at CalTec, 5 August in the HRC and 8-9 August in ANU House in Melbourne. In attendance were a total of 32 graduate students from 10 universities as follows:

ANU (HRC, CCR, RSPAS, History RSSS, School of Art, Faculty of Arts)
Melbourne
LaTrobe
Monash
Deakin
Vanderbilt
Chicago
CalTec
Columbia
Berlin

Academic presenters from ANU, CalTec, USC, Griffith, Cambridge, and Vanderbilt were involved in the workshops.

The workshops were very successful in encouraging graduate students to think creatively about re-enactment as an innovative form of historical methodology and to further explore the performative and theatrical aspects of their projects. The responses we have subsequently received have been enthusiastic.

Arising from the workshops we are taking steps to establish ‘Re-enact-Net’ as a web-based bulletin board for graduate students to post their papers, to further discuss their projects, and exchange information about developments in the field as well as future events.

Moreover, the workshops have given further impetus to the HRC’s developing research platform on re-enactment history and public memory and we are planning more workshops in 2006-7 to be held in Australia, Europe, and Britain.