After Authenticity at an American Heritage Site

Abstract

ABSTRACTS This essay explores what happens to a heritage site “after authenticity.” The site is Colonial Williamsburg, one of the most ambitious reconstruction projects ever undertaken and a place intended to be experienced as an objective correlate of an American national “identity.” Because it makes such claims, throughout its history the site has been subject to critiques by those wishing to undermine its authority to speak as the voice of an all‐encompassing America. Moreover, in the past 20 years, professional historians at Colonial Williamsburg have become articulate on‐site critics of the epistemology of authenticity as they promulgate a historiography currently popular in history museums and in the academy.