Book Review: The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies by Agnew, Lamb and Tomann (eds)

Book Review: The Routledge Handbook of Reenactment Studies by Agnew, Lamb and Tomann (eds)

Blog Article

Re-enactment studies are booming, just like re-enactment, living history and role play are.This handbook, therefore, is a good introduction for those interested in the more academic aspects of re-enactment.However, as is often the case with an academic-only approach, this book is not meant for those interested in the backgrounds of re-enactment per se.

The authors are academics, writing Dice Accessories for their peers; there are hardly any practitioners involved.The whole book feels like we are reading the reports of cultural anthropologists who have done Rolling Machines a bit of fieldwork.The History of the Field (Otto), for example, is a history of the academic approach, not of re-enactment itself.

This book is an aid to academic re-enactment studies programs, but does not support the emancipation or professionalisation of re-enactment itself.