Dissertation Research: "A Better Past Through Technology: World War II Aircraft as a Form of Cultural Heritage"

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Drawing on research into the cultural construction of technology and research on the objectification of culture in heritage movements, this dissertation research project examines the "industrial romanticism" which underlies the restoration of World War 11 airplanes, known as warbirds. Industrial romanticism is seen as a contrast to traditional, pastoral romanticism that characterizes most heritage movements. Through an ethnographic investigation of warbird groups and airshows, this project will examine warbirds' inversion of traditional romanticism's anti-modernist view of technology. This project will therefore shed light a new form of romanticism by examining the remaking or reinvention of an obsolete technology as an objectification of the past. Ethnographic research will be conducted in mostly Southern California, in the maintenance hangars of warbird groups, in the workshops of warbird restorers, at warbird museums, and at airshows. In addition to participant observation in these sites, the researcher will interview private owners of warbirds and other types of people involved in warbirds outside of the main research sites.