Hill, Kate (2023) “I Could Never Hope for Anything More Rewarding”: Pleasure, Selfhood, and Emotional Practices in the Forming of the Highland Folk Museum in the 1930s. Journal of British Studies . ISSN 0021-9371
Full content URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2022.172
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Item Type: | Article |
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Item Status: | Live Archive |
Abstract
The actions of Dr. Isabel Grant in creating the Highland Folk Museum in Scotland in the 1930s reflect how pleasure interacted with gendered identities to form modern feminine selves in the mid-twentieth century. In examining the subjectivity of Grant and her associates through material, textual, and visual sources from the museum, I interrogate both emotional and representational aspects of her development of living history. I suggest that, along with a sense of care and duty in such museums, women such as Grant were attracted by the opportunities of imaginative play and that they formed identities that were not reducible to either traditional or modern women’s roles; instead, they were drawn to a form of historical engagement that allowed them to work outside such labels, sometimes as eccentrics. Their play was more serious and nonironic than were many other forms of interwar modern culture, and living history initiatives since then have built on this modern-but-not-modern appeal.
Keywords: | Museum history, Highland Folk Museum, History of pleasure |
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Subjects: | V Historical and Philosophical studies > V212 Scottish History V Historical and Philosophical studies > V210 British History V Historical and Philosophical studies > V146 Modern History 1920-1949 |
Divisions: | College of Arts > Lincoln School of Humanities and Heritage > Lincoln School of Humanities and Heritage (Humanities) |
ID Code: | 52248 |
Deposited On: | 22 Nov 2022 10:02 |
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