Performing Histories: Archival Embodiment as Rhetorical Historiography
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Smith, Emily
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 23, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Cheryl Jean Glenn, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Cheryl Jean Glenn, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Debra Hawhee, Committee Member
Stuart Selber, Committee Member
Pamela Ruth Vanhaitsma, Outside Member
David Loewenstein, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- historiography
public memory
performance
rhetoric - Abstract:
- In “Performing Histories: Archival Embodiment as Rhetorical Historiography,” I argue that artists, scholars, and community members use performance to compose and circulate shared cultural histories through a framework I call “archival embodiment.” Archival embodiment articulates how archival texts are mobilized in performance to compose, circulate, and revise narratives of the past. The combination of embodied performance with the various material components with which performers and audience members engage—sounds, lighting, visuals, and/or tactile experiences—is what I refer to as a “performance ecology,” and my three body chapters illustrate three different performance ecologies, across multiple media. My introduction situates my theory of archival embodiment in the histories of rhetoric as a performance art, as well as recent scholarship on rhetorical historiography and public memory. Chapter 2 analyses historical drama and specifically discusses two stage plays: American Primitive and The America Play, elucidating their different historiographical strategies. Chapter 3 analyzes photographs taken by Charles “Teenie” Harris that compose a multimodal historiographical narrative to contest racist assumptions about Black neighborhoods in Pittsburgh. The fourth chapter analyzes the Monument Lab project, particularly the 2017 exhibition’s approach to deliberating upon public memory and transforming public spaces to enact historiographical narratives. I conclude by noting how this study contributes to scholarship on the rhetoricity of memory, highlights the importance of the multimodal rhetorical strategies of public memory, and provides a framework for undergraduate rhetorical education using multimodal archival texts to explore rhetorical historiography.