Genealogy

Research

15 pages, 257 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Making the Memory Book: War-Time Loss and Memorialization through Ephemera

by Bruce Scates

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020064 - 20 May 2024

Viewed by 485

This article explores the way a family fashioned a memorial to a son ‘taken by the war’. It focuses on the Robert’s collection in Melbourne, Australia’s largest bound collection of war time ephemera, and the making of what was called ‘Frank’s Memory Book’. [...] Read more.

This article explores the way a family fashioned a memorial to a son ‘taken by the war’. It focuses on the Robert’s collection in Melbourne, Australia’s largest bound collection of war time ephemera, and the making of what was called ‘Frank’s Memory Book’. It argues that families asserted ownership over their dead, crafting different modes of memorialization to authorized modes of remembrance, considers the way communities of mourners were brought together and highlights tensions between private loss and public memory. The making of ephemera is examined at length as is the part material culture plays in libraries and archives. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

18 pages, 3425 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Waiting to Be Discovered? Community Partnerships, the Facilitation of Diverse Memory, and Reflections on Academic Success and Failure

by Chris Kempshall, Catriona Pennell and Felicity Tattersall

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 62; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020062 - 17 May 2024

Viewed by 422

Abstract

Community partnerships, based on ‘the collaborative turn’ in academic research, are an increasingly common framework through which ‘bottom-up’ histories, particularly of diverse and/or more marginalised communities, are being told. This article is about the ‘doing’ of this type of work. It focuses on [...] Read more.

Community partnerships, based on ‘the collaborative turn’ in academic research, are an increasingly common framework through which ‘bottom-up’ histories, particularly of diverse and/or more marginalised communities, are being told. This article is about the ‘doing’ of this type of work. It focuses on the question: what lessons can be made visible when attempted cooperation fails to deliver the outcomes initially hoped for? Firstly, this article outlines the events and activities undertaken by the authors in exploring the ways that ephemera and other objects can be used to understand and transmit the historical experiences of communities often on the periphery of mainstream war commemoration. It will discuss the ways in which connections with these communities were built, with the aim of undertaking several creative writing workshops, leading to a co-produced publication of the participants’ material. Secondly, as part of a broader acknowledgment of the possibility of failure and its benefits, it will explore why some of these creative workshop efforts failed to meet expectations and outline a series of recommendations for other historians and community-orientated projects to consider for future activities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 29274 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Working Backwards, Moving Forwards: Ephemera and Diversity in Australian Stories of Indigenous Second World War Service

by Rachel Caines

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 61; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020061 - 16 May 2024

Viewed by 512

Abstract

Over recent decades, historians, communities, and museum professionals have worked to share and understand stories of Indigenous Australian military service. This article posits that ephemera from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection offer a tangible way to engage with personal stories and enrich [...] Read more.

Over recent decades, historians, communities, and museum professionals have worked to share and understand stories of Indigenous Australian military service. This article posits that ephemera from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection offer a tangible way to engage with personal stories and enrich the narrative(s) of Indigenous service in the Second World War. While many experiences were shared by the thousands of men and women who enlisted and served during the war, surviving ephemera and the related personal stories reveal the cultural, linguistic, and experiential diversity of the individuals who served. Using five case studies from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection, this article explores the link between ephemera and stories of service and suggests that sharing these links with a wider audience can serve to broaden understandings of Indigenous service and sacrifice. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 1292 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Typography of Forgetting: The Unsettling of Dominant Social Narratives in the Resurfacing of a Military Deserter in Family Memory

by Andrew Milne

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 60; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020060 - 14 May 2024

Viewed by 542

Abstract

Society expects history to be objective and factual. Collectively history is the memory of the nation, that group, the imagined community that believes that it has always been together. It could even be said that the nation is about forgetting; forgetting that the [...] Read more.

Society expects history to be objective and factual. Collectively history is the memory of the nation, that group, the imagined community that believes that it has always been together. It could even be said that the nation is about forgetting; forgetting that the people who make up that community were not always together as they are now, or the forgetting of those hurdles and hindrances that create obstacles to cohesion and continuity. Memory is collaborative by nature, and provides a legacy to society, a response to its own mortality in the future. This paper proposes to examine the case of subjective recounting of the past through a family memory of war, the forgetting, the gaps created in narratives to enable cohesion and to fit in with publicly acceptable discourse. It ultimately attempts to answer the question as to why it might be important to re-examine such stories of an individual nature, in a wider scope of the nation, and links those seemingly antinomic periods of time of past, present, and future, which are not as exclusive as might be believed. This paper focuses upon a deserter ancestor, going against the grain of traditional narratives. Traditionally, soldiers are considered by definition of what is expected from them in the national narrative, as ‘war heroes’. However, this paper examines the life of a military ancestor who, in reality, did not fit into that framework, and who deserted from the army (although never on the front line, thus avoiding being shot). Nevertheless, the multiple desertions (deserted five times in total, lost kit twice, was imprisoned, and was detained for desertion three times) only ‘resurfaced’ recently due to the availability of documentation and research carried out in archives. While the ancestor conformed socially to what was expected of him, the reality of his military files seems to reveal the contrary. Despite the high numbers of times that he did desert, he did also rejoin every time, and ended up spending 3 decades in the same military unit. Or, perhaps the manner in which society views soldiers pre- and post-WWI has been altered, and, as such, desertion was not once what it has become. Forgetting has been the norm in society regarding certain pasts that step outside of the national narrative, rather than remembering. This paper attempts to imagine the nation’s past in a different way, by including those who also deserted, an area of ill-defined research in military history. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 683 KiB

Open AccessArticle

‘A Return, a Mirror, a Photograph’: Return Journeys, Material Culture and Intergenerational Transmission in a Greek Cypriot Refugee Family

by Christakis Peristianis

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020057 - 10 May 2024

Viewed by 460

Abstract

During times of war, displaced families carry various material items that later serve as means for preserving the memories of lost homes and maintaining a sense of identity. In divided Cyprus, the use of material objects by people displaced before and during the [...] Read more.

During times of war, displaced families carry various material items that later serve as means for preserving the memories of lost homes and maintaining a sense of identity. In divided Cyprus, the use of material objects by people displaced before and during the 1974 Turkish invasion has been influenced by the opening of checkpoints between the two sides in 2003. This paper explores how different generations in my family reacted to and interpreted the rediscovery of a lost material item—a handmade mirror piece—during the return journey. It discusses how my mother located the item, photographed it, and placed its photograph in the family’s photographic archive. During the research project upon which this paper follows from, both items re-emerged through my mother’s storytelling about her experience of return, transforming the project into a form of intergenerational transmission. The paper portrays how the storytelling about the mirror piece and its photograph was interpreted differently by me and my mother, influenced by the different politics of memory. The paper also showcases the resourcefulness of refugee families in maintaining the memory of their lost homes, which simultaneously reveals their views and hopes regarding the political future of the island. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 1225 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Case for Reading War Poetry as Ephemera

by Julia Ribeiro S. C. Thomaz

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 55; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020055 - 10 May 2024

Viewed by 460

Abstract

The First World War blurred the lines between “ordinary” and “literary” writing practices. Many sources corroborate this: necrologies written about poets who died in the act of writing not a poem but rather a letter, or introductions to poetry collections where bereaved families [...] Read more.

The First World War blurred the lines between “ordinary” and “literary” writing practices. Many sources corroborate this: necrologies written about poets who died in the act of writing not a poem but rather a letter, or introductions to poetry collections where bereaved families and friends admit they had no knowledge of their loved one’s writing practices until they found a journal full of poems after the author’s death, which they only published as a posthumous tribute. This article uses examples of French poetry of the Great War to explore this permeability between what is considered war poetry and what is considered war ephemera. The main question it addresses is what changes when we look at the war poems that were initially ephemera or ordinary writing. Whose stories get told when poetry is studied not as literature to be judged as accomplished or failed art but as a way of writing to make sense of the world? It argues that when we choose to read poems as ephemera and from the point of view of a larger anthropology of writing practices, diverse histories emerge and communities who write poetry not only as an artistic pursuit but also as a means of organizing experience and leaving traces behind reclaim ownership over their own narratives. This can challenge the false equivalence between the cultural history of warfare and an intellectual history of the elites at war and includes poetry within paradigmatic shifts that place objects at the centre of mediations of the experience of war. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 2895 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Curating Community behind Barbed Wire: Canadian Prisoner of War Art from the Second World War

by Sarafina Pagnotta

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 54; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020054 - 10 May 2024

Viewed by 594

Abstract

Though often under-represented in the official and national narratives and in Canadian military historiography more broadly, the intimate and personal lived experiences of Canadian prisoners of war (POW) during the Second World War can be found in archives, photography collections, and collections of [...] Read more.

Though often under-represented in the official and national narratives and in Canadian military historiography more broadly, the intimate and personal lived experiences of Canadian prisoners of war (POW) during the Second World War can be found in archives, photography collections, and collections of war art. In an attempt to see past the mythologised versions of POWs that appear in Hollywood films, best-selling monographs, and other forms of popular culture, it is through bits of ephemera—including wartime log books and the drawings carefully kept and sent home to loved ones along with handwritten letters—that the stories of non-combatant men and women who spent their war as POWs, can be told. Together, Canadian POWs created and curated community and fostered unconventional family ties, sometimes called “emotional communities”, through the collection and accumulation of drawings, illustrations, paintings, and other examples of war art on the pages of their wartime log books while living behind barbed wire. This article uncovers some of these stories, buried in the thousands of boxes in the George Metcalf Archival Collection—the textual archives—at the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 3953 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“This Is How/You’ll End”: Holocaust Poems as War Ephemera

by Yael S. Hacohen

Genealogy 2024, 8(2), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020053 - 10 May 2024

Viewed by 565

Abstract

During the Holocaust, poets went to extraordinary lengths to write their poems and transmit them. Poems that were written during those years were often buried in the ground, stitched into clothing, smuggled out of prisons, or graffitied onto walls. These object documents carried [...] Read more.

During the Holocaust, poets went to extraordinary lengths to write their poems and transmit them. Poems that were written during those years were often buried in the ground, stitched into clothing, smuggled out of prisons, or graffitied onto walls. These object documents carried more than facts about these events; they carried the feeling of living through these events. This research explores the last poems of four Holocaust poets, Władysław Szlengel, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Hannah Szenes, and Abramek Koplowicz, investigating not only the poems but their object-ness and their stories of transference. These poems, like urgent postcards, deliver messages to a family, to a community, to the world. They ask―what does it mean to write a poem as a last will and testament? Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Wartime Ephemera and the Transmission of Diverse Family and Community Histories

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editors

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (8 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI