ANN: Memory and Trauma: Australian Migration and the Legacies of the Wars of the 20th century

AUSTRALIA AND THE WORLD SERIES
Masterclass
Memory and Trauma: Australian Migration and the Legacies of the Wars of the 20th century

Professor Joy Damousi
University of Melbourne

Professor Paula Hamilton
University of Technology Sydney

Date: Tuesday 31st May
Venue: Old Arts Room 205  E Seminar Room 
Time: 9.30am-5pm

Contact: Liam Byrne liam.byrne@unimelb.edu.au to register by Friday 27th May. 
NB: It essential to register as participants will be discussing their own research.  

The wars of the twentieth century resulted in the mass displacement and migration of over 70 million people through-out Europe. The two world wars and the Spanish and Greek Civil Wars resulted in the vast movement of populations.

How do immigrants fleeing from violence remember the experience of war in Australia? How do these memories of Australian migrant communities shape cultural identity? The place of war memories at the state and commemorative level are well documented. But less discussed is how memories of war are discussed, forgotten and remembered at the familial and intimate level of Australian migrant communities who have fled wars. For some families and individuals the need to forget and move forward is imperative to forge a new future. For others, memory of war is an essential part of family history, and so vital to retaining cultural and political ties with the past and cultural heritage. In this masterclass, issues of memory and war will be considered within Australian refugee and immigrant families. A consideration of methodologies such as oral history and the use of family photographs in charting the enduring legacy of war and its cultural repercussions will also be explored.

Professor Joy Damousi is Australian Research Council Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow and Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne. She is the author of numerous books, including The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia (Cambridge, 1999); Living with the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-war Australia (Cambridge, 2001). Her most recent book isMemory and Migration in the Shadow of War : Australia's Greek Immigrants after the Second World War and Greek Civil War. 

Professor Paula Hamilton  is adjunct Professor of History at the University of Technology where she taught for over twenty years.  She is a cultural historian who has published widely in oral history and memory studies, exploring the intersection between personal and public memories. She has also collaborated in a range of historical projects with  libraries, community groups, museums, heritage agencies and trade unions. Her most recent work is The Oxford Handbook of International Public History (edited with James Gardner) Oxford University Press, USA forthcoming 2016