Getting Dressed for Public History: Using Costuming YouTube as a Model for Historic Sites and Museums

Abstract

This thesis will discuss how museums and historic sites can use videos from the costuming community on YouTube to share their collections and interpretation to a larger audience. The tactics employed by these creators create engaging works that will bring in a younger audience to a museum or historic site. The process of making often employed by these creators is a methodology that facilitates the learning experience as well as creates embodied knowledge for the creator. This knowledge allows the creator to explain historic practices with nuance only available to makers. The process represented in this paper is a combination of interviewing YouTube creators, making a dress inspired by an extant garment, and the creation of a video series to share information about the 1910s garment worker’s strike through academic research and making.