What is the meaning of the stories we remember about the past? How do cultural institutions shape our memories? These questions are indicative of the way in which Memory and History in Twentieth Century Australia charts new territory and helps us to think about the past in different ways. In the context of a renewed interest in memory around the world, it examines the relationship between history and memory through a series of examples that explore the Australian background for the social process of remembering. The editors have divided the book into four sections: an introductory one with two essays that set out the debates and examines the institutionalisation of memory in museums respectively; a second section in which a number of essays explore the politics of memory and how the competing narratives about memory circulate and are negotiated in Australian society; a third section links the gendering of memory with private and public aspects of our existence; and the fourth explores our memories of place and how this relates to identity.
Many of these essays address issues relating to the impact of popular culture, particularly film and television, on memory and illuminate some of the ways that cultural forms shape remebering over time. The various contributors range widely across subject areas that encompass forms of both individual and collective remembering. Several of the chapters focus on aspects of remembering and representation of wars. Others deal with 'misremembering' and seeming confusion of specific events such as the Measles epidemic and Maralinga bomb testing of the 1950s, or the Bubonic Plague of 1900 and Pneumonic flu of 1919. Still others deal with the representation of experience: domestic decision-making, travel, migration and location or place. This book opens up the Australian past in radically different ways and demonstrates the centrality of memory to the writing of history.
- ISBN10 0195535693
- ISBN13 9780195535693
- Publish Date 29 August 1994
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 4 July 2003
- Publish Country AU
- Publisher Oxford University Press Australia
- Imprint OUP Australia and New Zealand
- Format Paperback (UK Trade)
- Pages 263
- Language English