ABSTRACT
To use the term production of historical meaning is to recognize that the representation of an environment or historical event is not so much a matter of getting it right insofar as the criteria for “right” is determined by 19th-century Hegelian or positivist notions of scientifically evidenced truth. The second half of the 20th-century brought significant challenges to the assumption that archivally corroborated historical accuracy was only a matter of time and labor. Much work has been done to trouble and nuance the idea of producing historical meaning as a new generation of scholars has addressed the question equipped with emerging discourses in, for instance, performance for social change, affect studies, and cognitive neuroscience. New paradigms in museum education have privileged experiential and participatory learning in reenactment programming as both pedagogically promising and as a way to compete in the age of user-generated content and individually curated entertainment platforms.
