Copyright by Kara Alana Mavers 2018 The Thesis Committee for Kara Alana Mavers Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Thesis: Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Charlotte Canning, Supervisor Rebecca Rossen Katie Dawson Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of the Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald by Kara Alana Mavers Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication For PRM Acknowledgements I am incredibly grateful to all those who have provided academic and emotional support throughout my time at UT. Indeed, it does take a village. Most specifically, I want to thank my thesis advisor Dr. Charlotte Canning who has made an enormous impact on my scholarly work, from introducing me to fundamental historiography texts to providing me with insightful edits and suggestions. In each an every case Dr. Canning inspires me to work harder, write more eloquently and make efficacious scholarship. Thank you for getting me here. I also want to thank Dr. Rebecca Rossen, who in addition to being on my committee has continually empowered me to believe in my own work and continue making scholarship. Dr. Rossen's notes on an early iteration of this topic helped shape and guide my research. For such support, I am eternally grateful. Lastly, I want to thank the final member of my committee Professor Katie Dawson for providing me with practical ways to translate my interdisciplinary interests into pedagogies and museum theater pieces. Such work continues to inspire me. I also want to thank all of the people who have helped me conduct my research over the past year. Beth Kerr of the Fine Arts Library was consistently helpful in supplying any and every book not located in the library. I am indebted to Liza Talbot of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library for her extensive knowledge of the Kennedy assassination files; each and every suggestion fundamentally elevated my research. Additionally, I want to thank Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernández, who helped me work through and realize the complexity of affect theory. Many of her notes given on a seminar paper find their way into this thesis' argument. !v Lastly, I want to express my gratitude for those who supported me emotionally throughout the process. To my PPP cohort for always listening. Specifically, Christine and Alexis who both provided me with deeply insightful notes and suggestions and, most importantly, always present shoulders to lean on. To Karen for her unwavering hospitality. To Celina for truly making Austin home and "supporting this family." To Christian for the consistent love and support. To my mom for quite literally everything, but for the sake of this thesis the steady stream of "energy balls." And finally, to my dad for inspiring me then and motivating me now. Thank you for starting it all. !vi Abstract Save Kennedy, Save the World: The Performance of the Popular Historiography of the Kennedy Assassination in The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald Kara Alana Mavers, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisor: Charlotte Canning This thesis explores the performance of popular historiography of the Kennedy assassination as provided through a 2017 mock trial by Citizen’s Against Political Assassination, The State of Texas V Lee Harvey Oswald. Popular Kennedy assassination historiography functions as a mythology of American culture, underscoring Manichean themes and symbolically represents a loss of American innocence. Dramaturgically reading popular Kennedy assassination history as myth alongside a 2017 mock trial highlights the ways citizens use theater to actively and affectively write history. As such performance studies, dramaturgical analysis, cultural studies and affect theory helps elaborate on the subjective and cultural dimensions of performed historiography in Texas V Oswald and other pop culture iterations. !vii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1: Introduction................................................................................................. 1 Description and Significance ...................................................................................12 Literature Review..................................................................................................... 16 Methodology............................................................................................................. 22 Chapter Breakdown & Conclusion ..........................................................................25 CHAPTER 2: Reading CAPA’s Mock Trial: How the Courtroom Dramatizes History ...28 Courtroom as Setting................................................................................................ 34 The Actors................................................................................................................. 37 Putting History on trial ............................................................................................41 Touching History: Inter(in)animation in Texas V Oswald........................................ 53 Conclusion................................................................................................................ 65 CHAPTER 3: Kennedy Assassination Popular Historiography .......................................67 You’ve Heard of the Kennedy Myth, But What About the Assassination Myth?.... 71 JFK as History on the Kennedy Assassination ...................................82 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................88 CHAPTER 4: Conclusion .................................................................................................90 Bibliography...................................................................................................................... 96 !viii CHAPTER 1: Introduction I became a historian because of Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK. While this statement might incite audible gasps from practiced historians; such a reaction is, to some extent, well warranted, as JFK is synonymous with conspiratorial conjecture and fantastical historiography of the Kennedy assassination. However, my early exposure to a film that so thoroughly engaged in restaging the history of the Kennedy assassination captivated me. I was fifteen years old when my dad showed me the film for the first time and being that it was his favorite movie, he curated an eight-hour long viewing and discussion that took place over two nights. The experience was thrilling, mainly because, of my father's passion to teach Cold War history and delve into the injustices of the assassination. It was as contagious as Stone's explosive film. I remember these moments so specifically: my dad would pause a scene to explain, my ears would perk, and heart would race, with every new detail I felt something. Intrigue. Passion. Suspense. With every new detail I felt like I was solving a mystery. Our mutual fascination with how the film JFK told history fostered a relationship of teaching, learning and camaraderie between my dad and I. However, it also sparked my own deep obsession with JFK's history and legacy. I was moved. I started to deeply care about modern US history in a way that I did not understand. I felt like I knew a secret about the Cold War that not even my history teachers would discuss. My fascination with Kennedy's history drove me to get a degree in US history, but as a !1 practicing historian, I came to terms with the complexities and nuances of Cold War history and JFK's lasting legacy. Yet my contact with conspiracy-theorist-rage fostered my interest in understanding how historical performances, like JFK, become ways of remembering and reimagining popular histories like the Kennedy myth. For such performances facilitated similar emotional reactions for both my father and me decades apart. The performed history of the Kennedy assassination espouses the ways popular narratives emotionalize history in a way that maintains the impassioned interests of amateur historians, like my father, years later. Thus, the performance of history matters to the ways one understands how history is made and consumed by the public. As a discipline, history often symbolizes true stories about the past. Yet, historiography proves such popular understandings to be erroneous, as historian Michel-Rudolph Trouillot succulently writes, "words are not concepts and concepts are not words," and the "ambiguity," in this relationship demonstrates "the ways in which what happened and that which is said to have happened are and are not the same may itself be historical."1 Historical narratives define, claim and erase; therefore, historiography is a subjective practice. Such a claim positions the historian as an integral part in the history making process, as "the historian meets the double demand of expressing what existed beforehand and filling lacunae with facts."2 Consequently, 1 Michel-Rudolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 4. 2 Michel De Certeau, The Writing of History, Trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 12. !2 history exists as a product of a historian's interpretation and narrativization,