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Abstract
Reenactment studies is a burgeoning area of research that has recently been embraced by performance studies, yet there is a gap in scholarship on the use of extended reality (XR) for immersive re-creations of historical events. This dissertation explores the phenomenon of digital reenactment and its roots of non-embodied performance that have always been a part of human exploration of lived experience through immersive simulations without the use of live actors. Living history has been a popular form of history education in the North America, the European continent and Australia since the early 1960s, though as the discipline has matured it started losing interest from history scholars as attractions sought larger audiences, funding, and reenactors sought experiences, in Rebecca Schneider’s words, allowing them to “touch time.” This work explores the ways producers of digital reenactments, seen in PC, mobile, and installment applications, have implemented the tried techniques of live performance while taking advantage of digital technology to move the form into areas previously impossible through embodied reenactment. This research questions the basic assumption made by performance scholars that all that is required for performance is a stage, a living actor, and an audience when digital reenactments are offering immersive experiences of history where the only required live performer is an audience member. The methods explored in these case studies offer improvements for widespread history education that are better suited to our expectations for socially distanced and individually catered learning experiences, made more necessary since the Covid-19 pandemic. Digital reenactments are poised to fill in the gaps of history education that has become untenable through traditional embodied performance and it is my goal to bring these non-embodied performances into discussion with reenactment studies.