SCA & History Thesis
May. 5th, 2005 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurI mentioned a while back that I did a long interview for Kaitlin Heller's thesis at Harvard, and a number of folks expressed interest in reading it. She's gotten the okay to distribute it, and given me a copy.
The thesis is on "The Re-Enactment of Arthurian Romances and Folklore in European Tournaments of the Thirteenth Century" -- basically, talking about medieval tournies that were recreating stories from Arthurian mythology, and relating that to the ethnography of modern historical re-creators like ourselves. The first half talks about the historical basis, with all sorts of interesting tidbits from period sources. The second half is the ethnography, mainly two interviews: one with a professor talking about re-enactment sites like Plymouth Plantation, and one with me talking (more disjointedly than I'd realized) mainly about the SCA. The two halves tie together somewhat loosely, but I found both quite interesting. I will warn that my SCA interview is at times painfully honest -- it's intentionally warts-and-all, and it's the oddities of the SCA that were often most relevant, since she was studying the Society as a living tradition.
Anyway, I have a copy in Word format, and permission to send it to SCA folks who are interested; it's about 130K. Drop me a note if you would like a copy. She's actively interested in getting commentary on it...
The thesis is on "The Re-Enactment of Arthurian Romances and Folklore in European Tournaments of the Thirteenth Century" -- basically, talking about medieval tournies that were recreating stories from Arthurian mythology, and relating that to the ethnography of modern historical re-creators like ourselves. The first half talks about the historical basis, with all sorts of interesting tidbits from period sources. The second half is the ethnography, mainly two interviews: one with a professor talking about re-enactment sites like Plymouth Plantation, and one with me talking (more disjointedly than I'd realized) mainly about the SCA. The two halves tie together somewhat loosely, but I found both quite interesting. I will warn that my SCA interview is at times painfully honest -- it's intentionally warts-and-all, and it's the oddities of the SCA that were often most relevant, since she was studying the Society as a living tradition.
Anyway, I have a copy in Word format, and permission to send it to SCA folks who are interested; it's about 130K. Drop me a note if you would like a copy. She's actively interested in getting commentary on it...