The Site is a Stage/ The Stage is a Site

Abstract for the Symposium by Associate Professor Peter Eckersall

2011-04-09T05:18:00.000-07:00

Port B: ‘site as stage’—the audience runs amok in the archive

Since 2003, when Port B was founded by Takayama Akira, this Tokyo based company have made interdisciplinary art works at the borders of what we generally accept as theatre. These include experimental theatre productions, art installations and works called ‘tour performances.’ Documentary performance techniques are used; techniques that use documents, interviews and site research to create new information and uncover hidden aspects of the past. Documentary performance often dwells on the connections that people have to places and tells personal, in many cases, revelatory stories.

This paper examines ‘The Complete Manual of Evacuation—Tokyo’ (Takayama, 2010) an artwork taking as its central image the 34.5 km Yamanote train line circling around Tokyo. At each of its 29 stations an evacuation zone was established. ‘Evacuation—Tokyo’ is described as:

A communicational system that enables the audiences to come into contact with communities that usually remain unseen in the shape of our present-day cities …. The dialogue starts via Internet and then spreads to several districts in Tokyo. (A venture with the aim of disrobing theatre.) A theatrical architecture, designing a new form of encounter.

Participants register on line and complete a questionnaire (still available at: http://hinan-manual.com/); depending on their answers, they would be directed to one of the 29 stations. Once there, they could meet ‘communities’ such as homeless people and migrants and explore the buried histories and cartographies of each site.

In ‘Evacuation—Tokyo’ an interactive network of temporary ‘sites as stage’ is created and the role of the audience is cleverly transformed. Who is an audience in these works? There are paying ticket-holders, people who interact with them at evacuation sites, and even the people in the teeming city that surround them. And how does ‘Evacuation—Tokyo’ narrate transcultural identity? Jacques Derrida writes in Archive Fever: ‘There is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory.’[1] He indicates that the stakes are high over the memorialisation and excavation of sites and people’s histories. This paper will explore how ‘Evacuation—Tokyo’ might enable the countering of such a fulsome ideological contest where dominating powers put their singular claims on identity. Participating in this carefully created ‘site as theatre’ enables the audience to run amok and see artefacts and people in different relationships to space and power.

Peter Eckersall is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies in the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Peter’s research interests include contemporary Japanese theatre, experimental performance and dramaturgy. His major publications include Theorizing the Angura Space: avant-garde performance and politics in Japan 1960-2000 (Brill Academic, 2006) and forthcoming Kawamura Takeshi’s Nippon Wars and Other Plays (Seagull Books, 2011). He is dramaturg for Not Yet It’s Difficult whose performance and media works are well known in Australia, Asia and Europe. Peter is presently a visiting fellow at the International Centre, Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie University, Berlin.

[1] Jacques Derrida Archive Fever, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 4, note 1.

Abstract for the Symposium by Dr Mammad Aidani

2011-04-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

We are sedimented: Perceptions and identity amongst the Iranian Diaspora

Centered on the idea of sedimentation this paper discusses the displaced narratives of Iranians in Australia and the ways in which they perceive and give meaning to the positive and negative emotions which they have

formed about themselves, their experiences of displacement, and cultural Otherness.

The paper argues that these perceptions and the meanings attached to the experiences are the sedimentation of geography, culture,history and linguistics. This sedimentation has shaped the psyche, memory and emotions of Iranians living in the diaspora. I argue that the perceptions of the Iranian diaspora are not only rooted in a sedimented cultural identity but also in the body’s perceptions of phenomena.

Dr Mammad Aidani is an interdisciplinary scholar specializing in phenomenological philosophy and narrative existential psychology. He is based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He is also a playwright and theatre practitioner . His research examines the cultural meanings of suffering and the types of identities and modes of belonging that shape the local world of diaspora communities. He is the author of Welcoming the Stranger: Narratives of Identity and Belonging in an Iranian Diaspora (Common Ground 2010). His plays have been staged both in Australia and internationally. His recent Journal articles have been published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies ( Routledge, 2010) and The International Journal of the Arts in Society (Common Ground 2010). His current research focuses on “ sedimentation, perception, consciousness and the body: The ways of suffering amongst Iranian diaspora men.”

Abstract for the Symposium by Dr James Oliver

2011-04-02T12:25:00.000-07:00

Ways of Seeing, Being and Becoming: identity as performance of place and belonging

This paper explores how people act on and do identity in contexts (or sites) of place-based belonging, with particular focus on contexts where colonial contact has informed a legacy of cultural (and territorial) assimilation, appropriation, and alienation; including processes of population decline and migrations.

With a particular focus on embodied and spatial negotiations of place, this paper explores the ontology of ‘being in place’ as a modality of identity that informs and subverts the national imaginary, where sites of identity are a stage (as both platform and process) of understanding and informing identities.

The paper employs examples of identity, place and alienation in an ethnographic journey from the Scottish Hebrides to the Australian continent.

Dr. James Oliver, McCaughey Centre, School of Polulation Health, The University of Melbourne.

joliver@unimelb.edu.au

James is a Research Fellow in the School of Population Health at The University of Melbourne. He was awarded his PhD in 2003 at The University of Sheffield, where he was supervised by social anthropologists Sharon Macdonald and Richard Jenkins. The thesis explored the identity negotiations of young people in relation to the Gaelic language, culture and place, in Scotland. This work was funded by UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, as was his subsequent postdoctoral fellowship at The University of Edinburgh. Subsequent to this he has worked across a range of projects and practices broadly relating to place, culture and identity; including, amongst homeless people in Glasgow, in arts development for the Scottish Arts Council, and more recently amongst marginalized communities in Melbourne. His work is developing with increasing reference to arts practice and research, with continuing relevance to the social relations and productions of culture, place and identity.

Abstract for the Symposium by Dr Dvir Abramovich

2011-03-27T02:55:00.000-07:00

Aussie Sabras: The Israeli migrant community in Melbourne

While the state of Israel was established to allow Jews to end their perennial narrative of wandering and persecution in the Diaspora, since its founding in 1948 more than one million Israelis have chosen to go abroad and settle there. Given that Israel was built on the pillars of immigration, Israeli emigrants encompass within their midst a complex and variegated array of identities, as well as multivalent links to social groups within and outside Israel. The latest figures from the Israeli Interior Ministry report that there are about 20,000 Israelis living in Australia and it is this group that forms the centre of this presentation.

It is lamentable that there are almost no local studies of the Israeli emigrant population, perhaps owing to the thorny and controversial nature surrounding the subject matter of Israelis leaving their homeland. As such, a broad spectrum of themes and issues associated with this community has not been scrutinized by the academic community.

The focus of this paper will be to examine the small sized, highly westernized Israeli migrant population in Melbourne, which at present constitutes the largest community of Israelis in Australia. Analysed and dissected will be issues such as: reasons for emigration, models of economic adaptation, the relationship between the Israeli community and the local Jewish community, the durable connections to the country of origins, patterns of communal organization and ethnic and religious identity. Based on ethnographic materials, the paper weaves together theories from the extensive field of migration and Diaspora studies.

Dr. Dvir Abramovich is the Jan Randa Senior Lecturer in Hebrew & Jewish studies and Director of The University of Melbourne Centre for Jewish History and Culture. He was president of the Australian Association of Jewish Studies for 5 years and editor of the Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, the only peer-reviewed journal in Australia devoted to the field of Judaic studies for eight years. A regular contributor to national media, he is co- editor of the book Testifying to the Holocaust (2008) and author of the book Back to the Future: Israeli Litearture of the 1980s and 1990s published in 2010.

Abstract for the Symposium by Associate Professor Gocha Tsetskhladze

2011-03-27T02:48:00.000-07:00

'Colonial Encounters': Ancient Greeks Overland

Contacts between Greeks and locals come in different shapes and sizes and
were transmitted in a variety of ways - objects, ideas, practices,
lifestyles, etc. - and different societies showed different ways of
accepting and displaying new ideas. What they accepted, they did so
deliberately because the new had to complement something already existing
within the receiving/accepting society. The question is always that of who
initiated the process. I shall explore the situation in the Mediterranean
and the Black Sea, focusing on prestige objects in local societies as well
as Greek features in the architecture of local settlements, sculpture.

Gocha Tsetskhladze is a Classical Archaeologist with two doctorates
(Moscow and Oxford). He is a specialist in the archaeology of the
Mediterranean, Anatolia and the Black Sea in the Archaic and Classical
periods, Greek colonisation, the relationship between Greeks and locals,
etc. He has published over 250 articles, chapters and books. He is founder
and editor-in-chief of the journal Ancient West & East and its monograph
supplement, Colloquia Antiqua. He has excavated extensively around the
Black Sea and is now Director of the University of Melbourne Excavations
at Pessinus in Central Anatolia.

A few observations about Carlton Housing Estates's Harmony Day

2011-03-20T00:07:00.000-07:00

On 17 March 2011, the Research Network participated in Harmony Day Ceremonies at the Carlton Housing Estates at the Suggestion of one of our members, Dr. Sara Wills. The Carlton Housing Estates is a planned development to supply housing to the disadvantaged, located in the middle of a neighbourhood surrounded by Melbourne University and gentrified upscale housing. Harmony Day, celebrates diversity in Australia.

Research Network Members Mammad Aidani, James Oliver, and Louise Hitchcock enjoy the festivities

The day featured various cultural events such as African drumming and a dance troupe from the Vietnamese community, Kurdish and Turkish residents, Somalian women groups and many others. There were very lively activities on the Housing Estate Centres Around the Childrens' Playground

Adam Bandt, the Green Pary Federal MP for Melbourne spoke of the changing ethnic landscape in Melbourne, which has more recent migrants than any Australian city. We were struck by the point that he stayed around to speak with the community long after the soundbite moment and photo op ended.

Photos From Harmony Day in Carlton

2011-03-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

2011-03-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

Harmony Day on Thursday 17 March at the Carlton Residence, the following is a short report written by Louise and I am sending it before attaching the images that follow.

Hi Mammad,

Here are a few more photos with short captions for the blog - Louise

There were a number of marquee's at Harmony Day and this textile tent occupies the space where a shipping container once served as a site of community theatre that Mammad worked with the Carlton residents to create a play in last year's community arts project called Light House.

Colourful dancers from the Vietnamese community were a vibrant presence at the festivities

Community residents and children participating in face painting line up for sausages.

A representative of the Wurundjuri community welcomed us to country

School of Historical and Philosophical Studies Research Day

2011-03-19T22:20:00.000-07:00

SHAPS Research Day 22 Oct 2010

Session 3. Research Networks: (27 people present)

Prof. Andy May: These schemes will continue to be funded by Faculty

1. Multi-Disciplinary (Australian Studies, Classics and Archaeology, Theater Studies, Anthropology, Jewish Studies, Art History) The Site is a Stage/The Stage is a Site: Archaeology and the Narration of Transcultural Identities: Preliminary Report on a Cross-Disciplinary Research Network

Dr. Mammad Aidani: conversational: presented his background and discussed how collaboration came about. He mentioned that his evolved in cultural theory and hermeneutic philosophy and psychology, also a playwright involved with various migrant and minority communities in Victoria and overseas. He highlighted that his activities have been embraced in Australia. Mammad said that his plays have been written in Persian along with 8 in English.

In his presentations he addressed that his is interested in how the City engages the other for example the Middle Eastern communities here and abroad both in the past and present. He emphasized that there are many aspects of our narratives that are both visible and invisible when we tell them to others. He disused the importance of knowing how the stories appear and are performed in the context of the city, particularly with regard to suffering and trauma. He said we mostly focus on the refugee, but not on everyday experience of being in exile. He said he want us to think of Melbourne as an exilic city as well which is not the case in most of our approached to studying refugees and migrants. He said that many people live with the view of themselves of being invisible and of feeling of being excluded: He quoted Middle Eastern and Iranians refugees saying that "They don't know where I come from and who I am." "I feel that they think we who are from Iran and the middle eastern-countries are barbarians and fanatics." He said that we need to pay more attention on the Language of narrators and the mythological reference the bring into their conversations when we study them. For example he said that there is a constant reference amongst Iranians that Cyrus the Great's cylinder of 580-529 BCE was the first human rights charter in order to let us know that they have a deep culture that knows what human right is and wish to defy the stigma that some people attached to them that Iranians never understand concept of human rights. He said that today's migrants go back to the past in order to find out who they are and as result resisting distress and social alienation. He said that symbols and signs have a huge impact on the way we need to imagine communities and the future. “Migrants have seen the monuments that form a great part of the history of their homeland. People refer to them whether or not they have seen them. Dead places still have profound meanings and evoke meaning. This is becoming more pronounced in the age of fundamentalism. There is a lot of references to the past in reference to the present” Mammad Said.

Prof. Peter Eckersall: English and Theatre program: speaking on behalf of himself and James Oliver in Anthropology. Theatre is a site to investigate things, not just stories, but embodied practices give us a way to investigate things with regard to specific practices, performance studies, esp. Shanks and Pearson Theatre/Archaeology: the re-articulating of fragments of the past as a real time event. The layers of the past being available to the present through the power of imagination, a process brought by Benjamin. Using Verbatim or Documentary or Political Theatre: reviving the world as a place to draw on through experience of place. Through a Japanese group called Port B where sites of the Tokyo Olympics were visited to create a perspective of the past by bringing it into the present. Elaborate performances that take place on a site, using the distribution mechanisms of a city through the experience of the truck driver. Field site for digging. Performing future memories with James Oliver and Sara Wills: Performance Cosmologies: Testament from the future and the past, through capturing stories from the past to create an archive of future memory in a way that isn't sentimental and romantic. Data taken out of the individual experience becomes a representational framework.

Dr. Felicity Harley-McGowan: Late Antique Ivories: Sites of Cross Cultural Referentialism. Hopes the group will assist her in thinking about her own work. A lot of attention in the last 10-20 years about breaking down the barriers that made this a traditional discipline, and getting away from particular types of material being within the domain of certain scholars, so it gets separated into categories and into different disciplines, which bring different questions and biases to the study of the Late Antique where we want to embrace all of that material and bring it into a more broad and fluid context. Felicity works with material of the pagan classes in Rome. Hinged ivory diptychs may have celebrated or recorded a significant event. Representation of pagan sacrifice is depicted on an elite object when pagan beliefs were under attack from Christianity. Christian elites are creating their own versions of these objects on elite goods and using a narrative language that pagan viewers would understand, but where there is a new context. Role of similar symbols plays a role within contemporary ancient audiences but with different ritual, religious, and cultural beliefs. Suicide depictions don't survive in Greco-Roman art, so look at the cringe issues regarding suicide in society at this time to develop an new visual vocabulary where models don't exist. Ivory workshops are responding to commissions regardless of the religion of the patron, which affects its meaning

Dr. Louise Hitchcock: Mammad is a muse for developing this project with his work on identity, trauma, ethnicity, and diaspora. I started the group to have the kind of conversations I had as a grad student. It is organized very loosely using the concept of the network metaphorically. It is not a system, using the term also metaphorically, coordination, with no centre. Mammad and others are looking to the past to interpret the present. I'm looking to the present, to migrant, indigenous and traditional communities to understand the process of identity formation in the past, theorize diaspora, to give the voice to trauma in prehistory, to re-invigorate the study of the past and the evocation of memory. We are looking at new ways to interpret and view identity. We are open to having new participants.

Joy-lyn Bell Ogilby is investigating the role of environment in the orientation of Mediterranean identity. How did trade negotiations result in relationships between traders and indigenous communities. Movement in the ancient Mediterranean is not so different to the movement of layers of identities today with the amalgamation of culture. Is there a transportability of culture? Different priorities and currencies in occur in different circumstances. Different identities emerge depending on the context of family and community. Trade is a viable enterprise. Repression is a deterrent, trade is an exchange of culture and politics is the creation of hegemony. Food is the most fundamental marker of identity for structuring social relations and fostering communal identity. How is food prepared and maintained. Materiality is a leveler of ancient society. Time, space, and movement: each generation’s identity is defined by transportability and adaptability. Layers in interpretation pervade most discussion of archaeological remains. Clay is used by an archaeologist to identify time, place, culture: plastic may take this place today. Time has many layers

Marcia Nugent is examining the relationship between botanic motifs and Identity. Belief, Ritual and Trade: Move from form to botanic remains as having a structuring function in the construction of identity. For example, Spanish Vetchling: uniquely found at Akroitiri on a breasted jug that was ritual. Spanish vetchling exported to Tell Nami in Israel as a marker of identity, and evocative of memory and it's role in identity; smell, taste, and intoxication as evocative of identity, social connection, and identity.

Abstract for the Symposium by Professor Aren Maeir

2011-03-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

Title: "The Other, the Neighbor, or the Relative: Negotiating proximity in
the biblical world - the Israelites and Philistines as a case study"

The ongoing interaction between the neighboring cultures of the
Philistines and the Israelites during the Iron Age is portrayed through
various lenses. In the multi-layered biblical texts, a complex set of
relationships is seen, ranging from outright hostility (e.g. David and
Goliath), collaboration (David and Achish) to intermarriage (Samson and
Delilah). While the dominant motif in the biblical text is a negative image
of the Philistines (carried in to modern perspectives), it is clear that a
much more complicated interaction is indicated. Archaeological evidence from
the last decades, and in particular from the recent excavations at Tell
es-Safi/Gath (biblical Gath of the Philistines), have revealed evidence of
bi-directional and multi-faceted character of the interaction(s) between the
Philistine and Israelite cultures, adding depth, and deeper understanding,
to the "on the ground" reality hiding behind the biblical texts.

Aren M. Maeir is an associate professor of archaeology at the Martiz (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. He directs the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project and co-directs the joint Bar-Ilan University/Weizmann Institute of Science Program in Archaeological Science.

2011-03-08T22:27:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

The event 'Carlton Harmony Day' is taking place on Thursday 17 March at the Carlton Housing Estate. It starts from 3:30 pm and goes till 8.00pm. Please be aware that it is a cultural event and there will be a lot of activities going on so we won't have the usual opportunity for meeting over dinner. Sara says she hasn't got the full program yet, but will send it to me as soon as she can. She has also made a very good suggestion that we could arrive to the event as we like as long along as we can be there by 5.00-5.30 if possible. This is the special time of the Indigenous welcome. After this we could perhaps go for dinner somewhere nearby maybe around 7.30 on Lygon Street.
It will be a great event and we hope you all could make it.
Kind Regards,
Mammad

2011-02-22T21:58:00.000-08:00

Abstract for the conference by Caroline Tully

Researching the Past, is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a response by practitioner Pagans to academic research on the history of Pagan religions.

Neo-Paganism is an umbrella term for an increasingly popular cluster of new religions whose adherents are to be found primarily in the UK, USA and Australia. A movement that consciously looks to the past and claims to revive the ancient religious practices of pre-Christian Europe, Neo-Paganism has always been dependent upon academic scholarship—particularly history, archaeology and anthropology—in its project of self-fashioning. Dependant primarily upon late nineteenth and early twentieth century scholarship, Neo-Pagans vociferously reject more recent research, especially when it contradicts earlier findings, perceiving it as threatening to their structure of beliefs and sense of identity. Not only do the results of such scholarship traumatise Neo-Pagans—however unwittingly on the scholars’ part—in some cases it rebounds upon the researchers themselves when Neo-Pagans seek to traumatise the scholars, the “bearers of bad news”, in return. This paper will present case studies which display the contested nature of the past by highlighting the combative interaction between Neo-Pagans and academic researchers at three types of site-as-stage: the archaeological excavation, the museum and the text, and explain how the performers fail to communicate as a result of speaking different “languages”. It will also discuss the infusion into Neo-Paganism of hybrid vigour through the activities of the Pagan Studies scholar, a researcher in the role of participant-observer, who functions as a “go-between”, easing the sense of resentment by Neo-Pagans toward the perceived
colonisation of their religion by “hackademics”.

Caroline Tully is a PhD student working on a thesis about sacred trees in
the prehistoric Aegean, Cyprus and Israel, under the supervision of
Associate Professor Louise Hitchcock. Caroline comes to academia from over
twenty years prior involvement in contemporary Pagan religions. Her
Postgraduate Diploma thesis, 'Spiritual Egyptomania: The Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn', was an attempt to critique and subsequently purge this
relationship from her psyche. Nevertheless, Caroline cannot resist the
lure of academic Pagan Studies and also continues to publish on aspects
Neo-Paganism for a popular audience.

2011-02-22T01:56:00.000-08:00

A message from Caroline recommending a book. Thanks Caroline

Hi Mammad,

You can post this book recommendation to the BLOG site too, if
you like. I just thought I'd suggest a book for the 'The Site is a Stage' group. I
beleve Louise did mention it at the first meeting.

It is 'Theatre/Archaeology' by Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks and is
available as a free download from Michael Shanks' website here:
http://documents.stanford.edu/michaelshanks/64

He has lots of his books available there.

OK, back to working on my abstract now.

~Caroline.

Abstract for the Symposium by Associate Professor Louise A. Hitchcock

2011-02-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

Archaeology and Sedimented Identities:
Trauma, Migration, and Performativity in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean
While we tend to think practically of distance as something that can be measured in time and space, distance can also be conceptual in terms of the time and obstacles actually encountered in transcending it, and it can be cultural through the confrontation with ‘Otherness.’ I plan to explore conceptual and cultural distance in the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1700-1180 BCE), in terms of how identity was acted out through performativity, as well as how identity was affected by violence, migration, and diaspora. Although this period is frequently treated as a seamless progression, it was punctuated by moments of violence and destruction, both natural and cultural. Little work has been done on the human toll taken by these events, which are frequently treated as stylistic categories of art that signal the passage of time. Thus, such events have not been adequately explored as moments or sites of human trauma and identity formation. As a preliminary exploration of these issues, I will consider destructions caused by the volcanic eruption of Thera (ca. 1614 BCE), and the violent destructions of the Minoan (ca. 1470/1450 BCE. Crete) and the Mycenaean civilisations (ca. 1180 BCE, Greece). In this pilot study, I will engage with modern ethnohistory and ethnography as an analog for raising questions about how ancient events affected individuals who can only speak to us through the material and spatial residues of their culture.

Louise Hitchcock is Associate Professor of Aegean Bronze Age Archaeology and Chair of the Classics and Archaeology Program at the University of Melbourne. Louise also has a minor in social theory and she has written many books and articles exploring the relationship between archaeology and theory. Her current research deals with Aegean, Cypriot, and Levantine connections, particularly Philistine identity and its Aegean connections. The Australian Research Council funds her excavations at the Philistine site of Tell es-Safi/Gath.

2011-02-21T00:23:00.000-08:00

> I'm just taking notes for my Abstract for 'The Site is a Stage'
> conference, which I hope to have finished and sent to you either Monday or
> Tuesday this week, and I'm reading through the blog from the beginning.
> Seeing as there are excursions planned to places around Melbourne, I
> thought I would recomend the Chinese "See Yup Temple" in South Melbourne.
> It is situated right near where I worked for 14 years at the Australian
> Tapestry Workshop and many people do not know about it. It is very
> interesting though. Here is some info.
>
> See Yup Temple, South Melbourne (Victoria) (1856 - )
>
> http://www.chia.chinesemuseum.com.au/biogs/CH00027b.htm
>
> From 1856
>
> Details
>
> The Chinese temple in South Melbourne (then called Emerald Hill) was built
> in 1856 by the See Yup Society. In 1866 it was rebuilt and enlarged. The
> temple cost over four thousand pounds to construct and was funded by
> compulsory donations from Society members. The names of more than a
> thousand donors are inscribed on two stone tablets at the Temple. As the
> Society is legally a non-entity the six titles covering the temple land
> are held in the names of six individual trustees. The remainder of the
> donated money was invested in two properties in Little Bourke Street.
>
> Still standing today, it was built as a meeting place for members but also
> includes two altars for worship and three memorial halls. The memorial
> halls hold over 13,000 tablets in commemoration of members who died and
> are buried somewhere in Victoria between 1850 to the present day. The
> Society held at least eight major religious services with offerings each
> year and the temple was open for all to visit or worship at all times.
> Although a temple it was not granted any rate exemptions for being a place
> of worship despite attempts in 1860 and 1912 until the early 1960s.
>
> The financial organisation of the See Yup temples in Ballarat, Bendigo,
> Castlemaine, Beechworth and a number of other country towns were modelled
> on the South Melbourne temple. Each local See Yup society bought land
> whose title was held under the name of one or more trustees and built the
> temple.
>
>
> ~Caroline.

Notes from Joy - Lyn

2011-02-18T08:48:00.000-08:00

Dear Mammad,

Thank you for the email and reading. I have been through it with interest
as I am familiar with the area involved and knew it well before it became
'gentrified'. It is interesting not only from the indigenous perspective
but also from the white observations and involvement. The areas
surrounding Fitzroy,that comprise of Victoria Park, Clifton Hill,East
Melbourne, Carlton and Brunswick were classified and defined by certain
streets, and it was these streets that defined the socio-economic profile
of the residents.It should also be pointed out that within the heartland
of these areas was a large factory area producing shoes and cigarettes, an
industrial part,townhouses for country gentry and city professionals.
Running through the centre, Gertrude street that formed the centrepiece of
a man called Wren's betting and gambling places. Reviled by some and
embraced by others, the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic church, Dr.Daniel
Mannix of Raheen fame was one who apparently was endowed from some of the
proceeds! The court case involving Wren's sons lingers on after the book
written by Frank Hardy about the exploits was deemed to be defamatory.
The gardens at the exhibition building site at the end of Gertrude Street
was home to the methylated spirits drinkers, and Nicholoson Street had
many Chinese herbalists as well as rooming houses for people of limited
means.Smith Street had the major department stores and catered for all
means levels.
The community housing has gone from poor whites to aboriginals to
Vietnamese to Russians over the decades, and the left leaning were the
trade unionists who were not part of the Carlton intelligentsia.
So you can see that the area has a rich and varied history.
I do not think that I will be able to come to the dinner as I have my
confirmation meeting for transfer to PhD papers to be delivered on Monday,
and I have had my head down.
Let me know if you want any further information and all the best for the
dinner, if I can make it I will, otherwise give my apologies.

Best regards, Joy-lyn

Dr Sara Wills' Proposal for the Conference

2011-01-25T22:02:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-17T22:50:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

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.

Research Network 3, November 2010

2010-12-12T01:33:00.000-08:00

Research Network 3, November 2010

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

Archaeology and the Narration of Transcultural Identities

Minutes from the meeting at Danny and Joes Restaurant

Attendants:

Dvir Abramovich

Peter Eckersall

James Oliver

Sara Wills

Louise Hitchcock

Joy-Lyn Bell Ogilvy

Marcia Nugent

Apologies:

Gocha Tsetskhladze

Felicity Harley McGowan

Eran Martin

Caroline Tully

Tasks:

Peter: volunteered to circulate his grant proposal application around.

Mammad: Needs to book table for us to go to the Afghan Restaurant Galley for Dec 9

Mammad will send around the web address for the blog.

Date for the Conference: May 1, 2011 was decided for our day conference

· We need a room with mini conference possibly at the Old Arts.

· Need to apply for fee waivers ask for a building supervisor and technician to be present on the day and assist us for internal hookup.

· Put out a call for papers for the group mini conference.

Welcoming:

Everybody congratulated and celebrated Mammad and Sara's ARC. Dvir greeted us at Danny and Joe’s restaurant. He described the meaning of Bet Hervon which is healthy appetite.

Discussion

During our conversations the Issue of belonging was discussed and how it comes into interdisciplinary research. The following question was brought up and discussed.

Peter: How do you imagine future memories?

· Future is conceived in terms of the past which is a lovely way of conceiving our project.

· Use video cameras to create a data bank of people’s experiences.

Hybridity.

· People coming together to create experience.

· Multi-media: video, musicians, archaeological sites and objects.

· We need to communicate interdisciplinary better as academics

Dvir: Raised issues regarding transgenerational transmission of trauma in Jewish community. People who came in the 40s and 50s didn't talk about their experience, but there is an explosion of work by the 1st and 2nd generation. In relation to Israel he said that Israeli's coming to grips with the 6 million Jews killed. He talked abut the 7th million who are the children of the survivors. He mentioned that parents transmitted their trauma, not by talking about it but by their behavior. On the issue of migrant experience Dvir talked about the questions regarding what does it mean to be an Israeli both in Israel and here, are they Israeli’s, Jewish, or Australians. He said in Israel it has been looked down upon those who leave Israel. He said there is an influx of Israelis over the last 7-8 years coming to Australia. Most of them came from the dot com bubble burst in their 30s and 40s, so they are economic migrants. He highlighted that there is a division between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi. He said that one of his students is doing a thesis on schisms in Israeli society.

Sara: When Australia was negotiating with Timor, there were some great works done on what are Australian borders and coming up with clearly defined boundaries. She refered to the children of survivors of East Timorese living in Sydney.

Dvir: Talked about how literature helps society to preserve the memory and stressed on holocaust deniers. He made reference to writer Wiesel: The opposite of love is indifference because a bystander is despicable.

Sara: In immigrant societies in general, the 1st generation is trying to make a living and 2nd has the prosperity to begin to look at things.

Dvir: Identity is hybrid as you can't divorce yourself from your genes or your DNA.

James: Identity is not just about claims but also about how they are received.

Dvir: Passover is a re-enacting of the ancient Passover meal.

Mammad: Identity is fluid and is about ongoing reflective processes interpretations and remembering the things we call lived experiences.

Peter: interested in the term self-hating Jew. Frequently applied to people who criticize Israel.

Dvir: doesn't accept the term, but refers to people who turn their back on the Jewish people. People who use the term want to silence criticism. Great works are being down by young authors. The holocaust is beyond our comprehension.

James: does the integration of different groups create a problem with the state for Jews/ Jewish state?

Peter: Theater people he knows in Israel feel threatened by the religious orthodoxy there.

Sara: Thinking about holocaust deniers. What is the current situation? What is the current size of the Jewish community there in Israeli?

Mammad: Iranian Jews in Israel see themselves as displaced people from Iran.

Dvir: Iranian Jews in Israel call themselves Persians.

Peter: Does Ahmadinijad really believe there was no holocaust. Hard to understand people like that. He makes himself extremely other.

Mammad: He almost seems to enjoy provoking everybody to keep himself in power.

Peter: It's an apocalyptic cult.

Dvir: 31 years since the Iranian revolution. Revolutions are usually to improve the life of the people, but life is not better. Iran is a wonderful, artistic country.

Peter: A lot of Iranian artist are emerging in the west and the films coming out of Iran shows that.

Sara: Said that she thinks of research as a narrative journey through different projects that may not seem connected on the outside but make sense.

Sara: My PhD is on William Morris and his environmentalism.

Sara: My work reflects my own status as an outsider here.

Sara: I realized the process of migration through a short period that I spent living in the US.

Sara: My Post doc looked at postwar British identity, looking at a British estate in Frankston, developed an interest in place. No coincidence that it was close to where my family moved to Australia.

Sara: this work was influenced by a couple of streams: class, migration was a redefinition of class and status and moved up the hill to Mt Eliza. Frankston had economic problems in the 1980s: high unemployment. A lot of British migrants were situated there creating an English ghetto. Also interested in women's narratives and how material culture was used to create identity such as tea towels or gardens. Sara: Has written a chapter about a Scottish man in Frankston. He had written his autobiography and it's full of references to the Beatles. Mentions the re-creation of the Eros statue in Piccadilly. This chapter is in a book and the story shows his passion for things connected with his English identity.

Sara: Then, I started looking at space and place, through abandoned hostel sites in Altona (Wiltona). A failing business park where someone was murdered. Interested in hostels. Nothing's there, but there was a particular architecture with corridors around it. It was purpose built, moving away from common rooms

to self-contained living space. Location between factories, refineries, and a swamp is evocative. Marybynong detention center as well as army barracks were converted into migrant hostels. Another site made into a heritage site was published in an edited volume: Places of Pain and Shame.

Sara: when on sabbatical, she wants to take the English stuff: it's been set aside because she was too bound up emotionally in it, esp since her dad made the family move here from Dorset. She referred to a paper called Flora's Box: a box made after the WW ME by a relative who was traumatized by the war. The box was not used but remained empty.

Sara: the box is a metaphor for migrant families who don't tell their stories.

Mammad: archaeology of emotions, invisible things need to be described and expressed when we are ready. Too much emotional engagement, we need to put time aside in order to give things that need to be expressed better attention.

James: Writing a book chapter about the strong lack of understanding between race and otherness. To Sara “so you get class based experiences rearticulated as racial problems which reproduce the problems.”?

Sara: I become interested in what happens to people depending on the age they migrate here. I feel that my Identity is split because I migrated here at 14. My next project is to look at local sites in the form of migration memorials. There's a post-migration phase of remembering in a reclaiming project. I am also interested in Sadness as a project.

Paper: Idea on faces of sadness. The work is filled with objects and monuments.

Mammad: memorials, future memories, create new spaces to think. Appearing in public as a right. When someone talks about sadness, they become deliberately marginalized. When you appear, you claim your right. If you have to ask about your belonging, do you really belong? Is belonging reflected or unreflected.

James: You may not feel like you belong (even if you fit in) because you have a longing for somewhere else.

Louise: What about the prehistory of sadness and emotions.

Paper proposals for the Conference Presentations on the 1st of May 2011

2010-12-11T23:08:00.001-08:00

1: Associate Professor Louise Hitchcock
Archaeology and Sedimented Identities: Trauma, Migration, and Performativity in the Late Bronze Age Mediterranean.

2010-12-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

Bibliomancy: In contemporary Jewish mysticism, a question about the future is answered by choosing a random passage from the Bible. Ancient means of foretelling the future include scapulamancy: reading an animal scapula and hepatoscopy: liver reading.

Fragmentary objects such as this burned figurine fragment often turn up in rubbish pits as a sacrifice, and in some instances a piece is retained to preserve a memory of the event.

The fire pit is for the burning of a sacrificial meal for the Samaritan Passover in northern Israel, where the meal is hastily consumed, but the scent goes to heaven, a common practice in ancient religion. The Samaritans see themselves as carrying on the traditions of the ancient Israelites to which they trace their descent.

Utnapishtim in Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamia) “The raven went, and saw the waters receding… Then I put out to the 4 winds, and I made a sacrifice…the gods smelt the pleasant fragrance”

Genesis 8:20: “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, I will never again curse the ground because of man...”

Iliad I: 62-67: “Who can tell why Phoibos Apollos is so angry, if for the sake of some vow, some hecatomb he blames us, if given the fragrant smoke of lambs, of he goats, somehow he can be made willing to beat the bane aside from us.”

Research Network: 19th October-Meeting Agenda

2010-10-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Faculty of Arts

Research Networks Seed Funding Scheme 2010

Application Form

Due: 7^th 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. 17^th 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 13^th 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 12^th 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: