Reilly, Colleen K.
(2010)
Staging Charleston: The Spoleto Festival U.S.A.
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
The Spoleto Festival U.S.A. is a seventeen day international arts festival held annually in Charleston, South Carolina. While the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. perpetuates many of the cultural practices of the hegemonic community of Charleston, it also participates in negotiations of culture on the contemporary global stage. The Festival and the City rely on one another to constitute an identity that is consumable for a tourist and/or festival audience, and this relationship became even more urgent after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Hurricane Hugo serves as a peripeteia of the self-fashioning and self-reflexive narrative shaped by the Charleston elite since the 18th century, and the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. serves as the agent of its denouement. This function of the festival impulse in the contemporary urban setting of Charleston, South Carolina will be the focus of this dissertation, which will examine the relationship between the "placedness" of the historical city and the "placelessness" of the festival atmosphere. This study will identify the features of the festival impulse that engage history, memory, and community and negotiate the territory between "place" and "space". It will compare the historical imaginary of the city with its contemporary identity as an international tourist destination and identify the strategies employed by the festival to destabilize homogenous worldviews and remap the geography of memory in Charleston's past and present.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
|
| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
28 January 2010 |
| Date Type: |
Completion |
| Defense Date: |
4 September 2009 |
| Approval Date: |
28 January 2010 |
| Submission Date: |
12 October 2009 |
| Access Restriction: |
5 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 5 years. |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Theater Arts |
| Degree: |
PhD - Doctor of Philosophy |
| Thesis Type: |
Doctoral Dissertation |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
; Charleston - South Carolina; festivals; Gian Carlo Menotti; memory; performance; Spoleto Festival U.S.A. |
| Other ID: |
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-10122009-085759/, etd-10122009-085759 |
| Date Deposited: |
10 Nov 2011 20:02 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 13:50 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/9458 |
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