Dr Sara Wills' Proposal for the Conference

The Vague Terrains of Our Otherness: Hostels as Sites (or Stages?) of Migrant Memory in Australia

This paper is about migrant hostels: about the accommodation, training, reception and holding centres set up by the government in the post-war years in Australia as a crucial feature of the post-war migration program.  Intended to provide temporary accommodation during an acute housing shortage, hostels provided a first home in Australia for hundreds of thousands of displaced persons, migrants and refugees in over 30 hostels and centres around the nation.  More particularly, however, this is a paper about ways of remembering migrant hostels and how some in particular have become sites of fascination, holding centres themselves of all sorts of displaced migrant memories, and sites that can perhaps put us in touch with repressed cultures of migrant memory in Australia - the ‘vague terrains of our otherness’.  Abandoned hostel sites in particular 'stage' migrant memories in Australia; this paper examines how we might explore some of these as 'waste site stories'.


Sara Wills obtained her PhD from the University of Melbourne and is currently the Associate Dean of Advancement in the Faculty of Arts and a senior lecturer in the Australian Studies program.  Sara's research specialties include migration and multicultural studies, with a particular interest in aspects of social memory as they relate to refugee issues and the meaning of hospitality and cosmopolitanism in an Australian context. Sara has received research support from the Australian Research Council and has published many journal articles related to her research.

Very interesting books for reading suggested by Joy-Lyn

Joy- Lyn thinks  that the following books.  "Have many interesting aspects
in relation to migration, colonisation,the diaspora and immigrants.
Attitudes,loss of cultural links and political correctness. In particular
the lack of communication and fostering of prejudices by 'interest groups'
with agendas which are often at best misinformed and at worst uninformed."

Martha C.Nussbaum. Not for Profit-why democracy needs the humanities. 2010
Princeton University Press.
Tony Judt. Ill fares the Land. 2010 Allen Lane, London and new York.
Sven Lindquist. Terra Nullius, a journey through no-one's land. 2007 The
New Press. New York and London.
Donald Horne. How I came to write 'The Lucky Country'. 2006 Melbourne
University Press.
Donald Horne. The Lucky Country. 2005.6th. ed. Penguin Books. Australia.

Abstract for the Symposium by Marcia Nugent

Sensing the difference:  memory of identity through symbol in the ancient world by Marcia Nugent

Senses are an integral part of memory formation and recall.  What we see, taste, smell, touch and the repetitive acts we perform are powerful embodied memories of who we are and our place in the world.   Memory can transcend time and space through the use of symbols – the most common being the transmission of meaning through written language.  Seeking to understand the identity of prehistoric cultures for which we have no translated record of individual or group memories is a greater challenge.  This paper examines the role of the botanic motif in the Bronze Age to reveal the identity of the peoples of the Cycladic Islands of the Aegean Sea.

Marcia is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Classics and Archaeology, researching a thesis entitled “Botanic Motifs of the Bronze Age Cycladic Islands: Identity, Belief, Ritual and Trade”.  Marcia has been a recipient of the Norman MacGeorge scholarship and published on her thesis topic in local and international publications.  Her interest in contextual interpretation of prehistoric iconography to reveal the living experiences of the peoples of the Cyclades has drawn her into the transcultural identities research network, contemplating the markers and symbols of identity that link to embodied memory and its transmission across time and space.