Research Network: 19th October-Meeting Agenda

Research Network

The Site is a Stage/The Stage is a Site:

Archaeology and the Narration of Transcultural Identities

I.                   Introduction

II.                Purpose of Group

III.             Goals

IV.             Research Interests of Members

V.                Contacting Absent Members to Organize Off-site Sessions

VI.             Schedule of Future Meetings: Local and Off-site

            1. Mid-October (1pm Mon. 18 October, BYO Lunch)

            2. Nov. 3, 6:30 PM at Danny and Joe’s Place

            154 Hawthorn Road, Caulfield North 3161; 9530-0090

           (Between Inkerman and Glen Eira Road)

            Reservations to be made by member Dvir Abramovich

VII.          Meetings during the summer break

VIII.       Presentations: School Research Days

IX.             1 Day Conference in Semester 1 2011

            Possible dates suggested: Thurs 28 April; Sun 1 May; Sun 29 May; Thurs June 1 (earlier dates were deemed better)

Minutes and Discussion: Research Network 28th Sept 2010

Research Network 28 Sept 2010

The Site is a Stage

Minutes and Discussion

Attendance:

Senior Members

Mammad Aidani

Peter Eckersall

Louise Hitchcock

James Oliver

Gocha Tsetskhladze

Student Participants:

Marcia Nugent

Joy-lyn Bell-Ogilby

Caroline Tully

Agenda distributed

Purpose and goals of group outlined

* Future meetings will alternate between on campus lunch time meetings and social          

meetings at an off-site location at an ethnic restaurant.

* A 1 day conference will be held toward the end of semester 1 in 2011.

Proposed dates were a Sunday or a Thursday at the end of semester or towards the end of the Easter break, on Thurs April 28 or Sun 1 May. The end of semester dates were not good for Gocha. Peter will be on SSP-long but will submit a paper

* Members are extremely eager but there were absences due to being sick, having surgery, and it being the break.

We agreed that a BYO Lunch time meeting would be held next on Monday 18 October at 1pm. The proposed location is in the Staff Lounge of the Old Quadrangle. The Old Quad is building 150 on the campus map and is located between the Old Arts and Raymond Priestly Buildings. The staff lounge is in the southwest corner of the Old Quad on the first floor.

* It was uncertain whether we would meet during the summer break but Louise and Mammad proposed a Christmas time social meeting at a Persian restaurant for those who were in town.

* We discussed the possibility of a presentation at Research Day in the various Schools involved. C & C is already full, and PASI is being split up. The group will make a presentation at SHS Research Day on Oct 22. It will be scheduled between 10am & 12pm, to accommodate our schedules.

* The discussion was lively and productive with both James and Louise indicating that they were already getting ideas for research papers.

Below is an edited summary of the discussions undertaken:

Mammad: suffering alienation displacement specifically Iranians, working within arts, sedimentation as a model, presentations, references to remote and/ or ancient symbols, names places, ancient civilizations and how they are rewritten into contemporary life. An archaeology of emotions. Look into the past and present to create interdisciplinary dialogues. We are performing all the time. Ancient history comes into present narratives.

Joy: are there different degrees of relating to the past in different societies. It's symbolic and emotional. Whether you are a villager or an elite you have stories and strong attachments.

James Oliver: anthropology cultural identity, and cultural identity with relationship to place, mental health, migrants, education, performativity - dialectic of social life

Petere Eckersall Japanese studies, cultural history and space in Japan in the 1960’s, plays in sites since the 1980’s with modernity, virtual creativity and future memories project. Staging of performance.

Gocha T classical archaeologist, colonization between Greeks and natives, try to compare between modern colonization.

Joy wants to rehabilitate the Phoenicians and look at great diaspora during the Iron Age and look at Phoenicians as transposers of culture, looking at the sea as something connecting people, and knowledge of the sea by the Phoenicians. Use the vessels; look at coastal regions that informed the identities.  Evidence for changes in the landscape.

Caroline looking at reception of antiquity in neo paganism

Marcia: looking at identity through art

Mammad: displacement is something that happened in all different time periods. Contemporary people are connected to the past even if they don't speak of it. How narratives are consciously or unconsciously shared. The smells of food or sounds always evoke a response. Hopes, dreams, arts, positive aspects; not just trauma informs migration experience. Sedimentation of emotions.

Joy: is displacement a Near Eastern phenomenon.

Mammad: there are sites wherever you go. Social and cultural theory has not dealt with sedimentation. Romanticism and nostalgia

Peter: performativity deals with repetition through time and space. Performativity challenges authenticity. Physical presence: places are performative.

Caroline - do Iranians go to pilgrimage sites?

Mammad: it might be about childhood nostalgia, it may be available in literature.

Louise - Homer and the Bible are examples of that

Caroline - there is imagined heritage

Joy: what about the difference between migration and colonization- one is imposed, possibilities, memories

Peter: scholar who took people through his village and recounted his childhood to be contradicted by his mother

James: colonization v migration - both can be oppressive. Performance is looking forwards as it's also looking forwards. Joy: not an entire family can migrate; the child has to negotiate a variety of relationships. Gocha: all migration is forced. You don't migrate for no reason.

Mammad: how does modern language and global context bring new ways of analyzing? Stories change over 10 years. Emotions are readily accessible and it's about us. Our current mindset revolves around the past, sedimented emotions bring us to alien places, which are expressed through conversations. Experiences during rehearsal are producing new texts. Peter: rivalry between China and Japan

Gocha: Migration: links and memory something that persists mainly in the first and second generation.

Mammad: enacted through the body.

Peter - some people don't want to be ethnic. Theatre privileges the idea that you have to have an identity.

Louise - how do you identify acculturation?

Peter there's a book about invented Japanese traditions. What happens if you don't smell the cherries?

Mammad - it's about the experience, what happens when they see something?

Louise - what happens if you no longer have the experiences that evoke your memories?

Mammad: no grand narratives, but there are fragmented narratives. A freer less structured situation. The nearness of the evocative experience, how do symbols do this? Shared symbols collapse the boundaries of status difference. Suffering is a site of creating beauty because there is also hope. Debilitating emotions in first 2 generations. Suffering is a site of redemption.

Peter: modern theater is the reinvention of communities particularly through music and song which is not threatening whereas warrior traditions are not revived. Performance is used to revive, mentioned a book by Joy Hendry, and entitled Reclaiming Culture: Indigenous People and Representation. It deals with how and why indigenous cultures around the world can be rekindled. Performance is negotiated.  Knowledge is assumed in our intellectual transactions.

Research Network on Transcultural Identities

The Site is a Stage-The Stage is

a Site:

Archaeology and the Narration of Transcultural Identities

First Project Meeting

Date: 28 September 2010

Time: 5.00pm

Where: University House

The Application Form

Faculty of Arts Research Networks Seed Funding Scheme 2010 Application Form

Due:  7th June 2010,  1 signed hard-copy to Graduate School of Humanities & Social Sciences, Ground Floor  Reception, Old Arts Building, AND 1 pdf version to d.thomas@unimelb.edu.au

A1. Details of Research Network Coordinator:

Name:    Louise Hitchcock                                                                                   Employee No. : 048979 School:   Historical Studies                                                   Level of appointment:  Level C   Date (year) appointed to the university:  2004                  End date of this appointment (if applicable):  N/A Teaching and Research staff member    X                               Research staff member

A2. Details of other participants in the proposed research network (minimum of 2 people, maximum of 20):

Name (Title, First name, Last name)	School (and Faculty for any staff outside the Faculty of Arts)
Dr. Mammad Aidani	Australian Centre/Historical Studies
Dr. Sara Wills	Australian Centre/Historical Studies
Dr. Fran Martin	Cultural Studies/Culture & Communications.
Dr. Felicity Harley-McGowan	Art History/Culture & Communications
Dr. James Oliver	Anthropology/PASI
Dr. Andrew Jamieson	Classics & Archaeology/Historical Studies
Dr. Dvir Abramovich	Jewish Studies/Historical Studies
A/Prof. Gocha Tsetskhladze	Classics & Archaeology/Historical Studies
Prof. Kate Darian-Smith	Australian Centre/Historical Studies
A/Prof. Peter Eckersall	English & Theatre/Culture & Communication (also in another proposal)
Dr. Nicholas Vlahogiannis	History/School of Historical Studies.
Dr. Joanna Wills	Cultural Heritage Officer, International Council of Museums, Asia-Pacific Alliance

B.      Application for research network funding

Please address the following (no more than 4 pages in total – additional pages will be removed)

B.1 What is the theme or themes around which this research collaboration is proposed? Provide a brief justification of the significance of the theme(s) for the Faculty of Arts’ research future. Project Title: The Site is a Stage/The Stage is a Site: Archaeology and the Narration of Transcultural Identities Our research network will be linked to the following interconnected themes: Colonialism, Migration and Diaspora; Transculturalism and Hybridity; Belonging, Assimilation, Trauma and Displacement; and Identity as Constructed through Experience and Performativity. We plan to interrogate the categories of the construction of human identity and what it means to be human in the past and present. Locating these categories in the realm of language and culture lies at the core of the Liberal Arts as a creative endeavor in understanding the human condition.  Understanding the impact of population movements and experiences plays a key role in constructing identity. In the Bronze Age, catastrophes resulted in refugee and diaspora migrations, but they are poorly understood and the role of trauma and suffering is under-theorized because the populations have long since disappeared, leaving only material remains and destructions. The sites of ancient trauma and destruction might form a discursive space for elaborating contemporary trauma. In the Classical world such movements have been understood as colonization, Hellenization, and Romanization, or articulated through post-colonial narratives. They are in a state of crisis and would also benefit from participating in a dialog with contemporary scholarship on these issues. In addition, by the early Iron Age, migrations from an almost complete collapse of Bronze Age society resulted in the appearance of new cultural groups including Phoenicians, Philistines, Neo-Hittites, Israelites, and the emergence of the Greek polis or city. These processes were previously explained through invoking colonialist narratives, which imply asymmetrical relationships of superior migrants bringing culture to backward native populations. Recent scholarship has sought to replace this model with employing the terms creolization, mimicry, and/or hybridity to imply cultural mixing, however creolization is a term that also has colonialist origins expressed linguistically rather than through conquest, and hybridity is located in biological metaphors linked to the cross-breeding of plants and/or animals. These terms are outdated and fail to capture the complexity and multi-vocality of cultural mixing and clashing by multiple groups of migrants with varying motivations. Preceded by continuous contact through trade, conflict, and diplomacy in the Bronze Age, cultural changes in the Iron Age may be better understood as a result of movements by knowledgeable groups reacting to negative push stresses and positive pull attractions of the socio-economic situation as a possible explanation for migration. However, mechanistic explanations do not address the social and cultural fragmentation, trauma, and sedimentation of identities that results from the clash of cultures that would occur over several generations of living in a new world, or the role of gender in contributing to cultural change. Interactions between archaeologists with cultural theorists studying the contemporary migrant experience may shed new light on theorizing these changes, while the focus on material culture in the distant past can serve to illuminate the role of material culture in the present. As a model for encompassing this dialectic, we prefer the model of transculturalism, which allows for considering the entire range of encounter, interaction, polylog (multiple dialogs) and performance in the past and the present.

B.2 Outline your potential to build a new collaboration around existing research interests or a new field of research.

Our network will be absolutely unique in taking a Longue durée and multicultural approach to the understanding of migrant identity and diaspora moving back and forth, from the prehistoric, classical and Byzantine past, which spans a time of periodic social upheavals, complete social collapse leading to the formulation of new ethnic groups and the migration to new lands as well as new religions, to the experiences of migrants and refugees in the present. In the distant past, cultural identity is understood through empirical evidence such as the epic journey, art, the spatial manipulation of material remains, foodways, and language formation while in the present migrant identities are understood through art, performativity, hospitality, trauma, stigma, suffering, experience, and assimilation. We will interrogate how studies of identity in the past and present might help us re-imagine migrant experiences.

B.3  What will this cross disciplinary and cross School collaboration add to existing or emerging research by the individuals/groups involved?

We hope to develop nothing less than a new field of research in transculturalism and identity studies at the University of Melbourne through an innovative merging of theatre studies, archaeology, food studies, theories of embodiment and performativity, cultural studies, indigenous studies, history, and philosophy. We believe that our collaboration will lead to invoking new questions, and combining material culture, oral testimonies, and text in novel ways that lead to innovative new ways in understanding the relationship between the construction of identity and trauma through examining what it means to reflect on the foreign. Interaction with diaspora and refugee communities by archaeologists will provide new insights into the way we interpret ancient remains and contemporary experience to narrativize the past and present. In addition, cultural theorists studying the present will gain new insights into the way material culture affects performativity. Archaeology enables us to open up the world of the invisible by creating a context for conversation through the medium of past cultures, which can serve as a mechanism to narrativize traumas in the present. Performativity, thus becomes a medium to develop a conversation and language mediates the symbolism of both the present and the past. An example of this is found in the work of Herodotus, who created a narrative of the places he visited, which later became supplemented and frequently re-written through archaeological and historical study.

B.4  How is the proposed research collaboration new and different to existing research that the named participants are involved in? Please verify that it has not previously received substantial funding support, including from any other Faculty or University collaborative or inter-disciplinary funding schemes.

What is absolutely unique about this network is that it represents a new collaboration that will comprehensively bring scholars studying the ancient world at the University of Melbourne for the first time into contemporary conversations in cultural studies with global coverage involving Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Australia and engaging all major monotheistic and some polytheistic religions.  Similar types of networks have been created at Stanford University and at Theoretical Archaeology Group Meetings in Britain, though these lacked the multicultural component that is proposed here. The network is inspired through new conversations between Hitchcock and Aidani that began at the School of Historical Studies research day and through Hitchcock’s participation in Faculty of Arts meetings on forming research clusters. It has received no prior funding. Our main goal is to stimulate and inspire our research to take new directions both collectively and individually, and produce tangible outcomes in the form of publications and grant proposals. Our goal is to develop new, cross-disciplinary and multicultural interpretations of identity, sites, objects, memory, and culture. We are proposing a broad temporal and geographic scope that spans the Late Bronze Age (ca. 17th c. BCE) cultures of the east Mediterranean to contemporary Australian society, and includes migrant communities from the non-western and western world. We will examine how the experiences of peoples in the past and present can inform each other and result in new narratives of regional, human, and individual histories. In looking at the individual as a site for the performance of identity, we will examine how the tensions between uniqueness, tradition, and change affect identity. Through a dialectic approach, we hope to open up new research questions in the social sciences and humanities. One constancy, which links our approaches is attention to memory and nostalgia as evoked by food and landscape across the migrant experience regardless of class, place, time period, socio-economic experience or gender – whether it is the Philistine introducing the consumption of pork to the Levant or the evocative role of the cherry tree in contemporary Persian migrant communities as explored by Aidani. In recent work, Hitchcock has used the sights, smells, sounds, and performances of Samaritan ritual sacrifice in Israel to give voice to 13th c. BCE architectural ritual spaces in ancient Cyprus. Material culture and the habits ingrained through its everyday use have the power to move our understanding of identity beyond the limitations of words. In Orientalism, Edward Said compared the Middle East to a stage set of Europe’s collective daydream with a rich cast of characters including Troy, Babylon, the Arabian Nights, and Biblical stories. This metaphor can be extended to all parts of the non-western world that have been subjected to colonialism and we propose to use this symbolism to re-appropriate the concept of performance and theatricality to give voice to the voiceless, re-contextualize objects in a new narrative, and reflect on materiality by replacing dialog with polylog.

B. 5 Outline the potential of this group to build external links with other researchers beyond the Faculty of Arts or with industry research partners.

Our goal is to engage contemporary migrant communities in our study, including Africans, Asians, Middle Eastern peoples, Jews, Greeks, and eastern Europeans in discussions about multiculturalism, memory, and existence. It has the potential to engage researchers working in psychology, public health, museums, and heritage studies. It also has the potential to engage community leaders and religious leaders of various migrant groups.

B.6 How many RHD students have the applicants attracted and how many have completed in the last five years? Please list enrolments and completions for those named in this research cluster, on either an individual basis (for small groups of applicants) or a School basis (for large groups).

Louise Hitchcock (7 RHD Completions [3 PhDs, 4 MAs] and 18 Honours completions in 5 years) Currently involved in the supervision or co-supervision of 14 students Mammad Aidani (1 RHD Completion at Victoria University, 1 co-supervision). Is extremely popular as a workshop coordinator for RHD students across the Faculty. Sara Wills (2 RHD completions plus 4 as Associate Supervisor in 5 years) Currently involved as primary supervisor of 9 RHD students. Other participants have a good supervision and completion record, particularly A/Profs. Darian-Smith and Eckersall.

B.7  How will the collaboration involve existing or attract new graduate research students?

We will stimulate new approaches to ethnography, fieldwork, language study, and writing historical narratives about identity, assimilation, multiculturalism, the role of the past in the present, and the significance of material culture. Several of Hitchcock’s students are already involved in the study of interconnections in constructing identity through the study of jewelry, maritime symbolism, libation practices, comparative linguistics, Philhellenic identity, and body modification. She hopes to attract more students combining contemporary ethnography with the study of consumption patterns and symbolism in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Mediterranean. Aidani has attracted students to his workshops and performances from a broad range of disciplines including Law, Land and Environment, and Classics. Wills’ students are engaged in research of Somali migrant communities, Iraqi asylum seekers, transgenerational shifts in identity among Vietnamese migrants, and transnational histories of Burmese migrants in Australia. Other students in the Australian Centre are working on projects that involve local museums such as the Immigration and Jewish Museums, and working with Asian, African, Greek, and Middle Eastern migrant communities. Their projects include the study of memory and transnational families. In addition, we have already been contacted by other students in the School of Historical Studies who are keen to engage in this research network as a means of theoretically informing their thesis research and we will promote the network to students through Faculty e-mail lists.

B.8  What initial activities are proposed to build this collaboration? What outcomes are expected to be achieved after 1 year?

We would like to begin with monthly research network meetings – with some taking place in ethnic restaurants over a shared meal, take fieldtrips every other month to sites of local importance in the migrant community, conduct a workshop at the end of year one, and submit at least one refereed article for each network participant. Hitchcock has been previously involved in developing research networks in the study of archaeological theory among European and American archaeologists working in Athens and in the Dept. of Archaeology at Cambridge University. In addition, we hope to broaden participation across the Faculty beyond the individuals listed in this application. In fact, individuals submitting other Research Network proposals have expressed interest in joining this network if their application is unsuccessful. Hitchcock engaged in a program of fieldtrips as a member of a research network at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and found them to play a key role in fostering conversations and stimulating creativity. We propose to take fieldtrips to experience Sufi and Zoroastrian rituals in Melbourne, participate in Sudanese coffee ceremonies, visit migrant resource centres, mosques, the Maronite church, participate in Jewish rituals, and view cultural collections on campus and at Heritage Victoria. Different members of the group will plan the field trips on a rotating basis under the coordination of Aidani. If the application is not successful, we would be interested in becoming involved in a comparable research network that does receive funding.

B.9  At the conclusion of 2 years of funding ,what are the proposed outcomes from this collaboration? Include research meetings and colloquia, publications resulting from the collaboration, new relationships external to the University, submission of grant applications, collaborative teaching, increased public profile of the collaboration and the University

We plan to continue the activities described above. Culmination of 2 years would be a 1 day conference that would culminate in a play The conference will enable the research network to present the results of our conversations and interactions while also interacting with an international speaker of prominence in cultural studies and including colleagues from neighboring universities. The play will invoke symbolism of how contemporary migrants interact with the past in the form of ancient objects, concepts of hospitality, and epic such as the story Gilgamesh. Our goal is to open up the conversation about identity and involve members of local cultural communities. Publish the proceedings of the conference Submit one or more ARC applications Present our research at national and international conferences, such as the American Schools of Oriental Research Annual Meeting where Hitchcock chairs a session on Theoretical and Anthropological Approaches to Near Eastern Archaeology Present several Public Lectures All of these activities will raise the public, academic, and international profile of both the Research Network and the University.

C.  Budget

All costs should be quoted excluding GST.

Note the Guidelines on what can, and cannot, be funded under this scheme

Budget Item	$ Total Amount Requested
Teaching Relief for Network Coordinator (only available for the Coordinator for tutorials and equivalent duties, and is NOT available to those who hold Faculty teaching support fellowships for the period of the seed funding. Amounts requested should be determined in consultation with your Head of School)
N/A Network Coordinator has Teaching Relief for her ARC project
Sub-Total (teaching relief):
Colloquia and Seminars
Coffee Break for Year 1 Workshop	$500.00
Will apply for Venue Fee Waiver for 1 day conference  & play in year 2	000
Coffee Breaks for year 2 conference	$1,000.00
Poster and Program Print and Design for year 2	$1,000.00
Reception for year 2	$3,000.00
Production of Play for year 2	$8,000.00
Sub-Total (colloquia):	$13,500.00
Web site Development and Maintenance
Develop and Maintain Blog and Facebook Page for Research Network Year 1	$3,500.00
Maintain Blog and FB Page for Network in Year 2	$1,500.00
Sub-Total (web site):	$5,000.00
a.   Travel   (bringing in international or interstate collaborators who cannot be funded from existing Faculty and University schemes, such as the Visiting Scholars Scheme) Note that funding to attend conferences is not included in this scheme
Invite 2 Interstate Speakers in Cultural Studies for Year 1 Workshop	$2,000.00
Invite Prominent International Speaker in cultural studies or the arts such as Donald Preziosi or Homi Bhaba for Year 2 Conference	$2,500.00
Will use the $2,500.00 as matching funds to supplement budget with grant form Ian Potter foundation
Will fund a prominent international speaker in Philistine Archaeology and Hybridity from Network Coordinator’s ARC Grant	$000
Sub-Total (travel):	$4,500.00
Other
Post-doctoral Research Assistant in Year 1	$7,000.00
Sub-Total (other):	$7,000.00
Total	$30,000.00

JUSTIFICATION OF THE BUDGET: Explain why each item in the budget is essential to build the collaboration Explain how you arrived at these figures, identifying sources for figures (e.g. airfares and per diems)

Having yearly goals, with the final culmination being a conference and a play will focus the collaboration, while a website will inexpensively promote the network’s activities. Having a research assistant in year 1 to gather research materials for the group, will free the group to maximize its collaborative potential and give it momentum for achieving the outcomes of a conference and 1 or more grant proposals in year 2. The Network coordinator has planned up to 6 international trips a year of her own and has already organized a major international conference (DAIS: The Aegean Feast, the 12th International Aegean Conference). She is well-versed in travel and conference costs as well as how to maximize funding through applying for fee waivers and matching grants. Her co-coordinator, Aidani is experienced in the writing and production of theatrical performances. The play will serve as a highly visible focus of our activities that will engage broader communities. Aidani and Wills will coordinate the network while Hitchcock is on SSP Long in semester 2 in 2011, but Hitchcock will continue to participate through the use of new technologies.

D. Signatures

Head of School: I support this application. 

Name: Prof. Stephen Wheatcroft  Signature:  ………………………………………..  Date: ………………

Network Coordinator’s Signature: I declare that all those named on this application have agreed to be involved

* E-mails of participants can be provided upon request

Name:: Louise Hitchcock Signature:  Date:  7 June 2010

School Themis Account: 131-

School Themis Account: