Journal articles on the topic 'New Zealand. Army. Cyclist Corps'

To see the other types of publications on this topic, follow the link: New Zealand. Army. Cyclist Corps.

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

Select a source type:

Consult the top 16 journal articles for your research on the topic 'New Zealand. Army. Cyclist Corps.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse journal articles on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

1

Mikhailov, V. V. "THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND CORPS IN EGYPT BEFORE LANDING AT GALLIPOLI IN 1915." Scientific Notes of V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. Historical science 6 (72), no. 4 (2020): 86–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.37279/2413-1741-2020-6-4-86-96.

Full text
Abstract:
The history of the Australian and new Zealand corps (ANZAC) in preparation for the landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula in the Egyptian training camps is studied. The relationship between the rank and file of the corps is analyzed. The study examines the living conditions and relationships of Australians and new Zealanders with the local population in and around Cairo. The study examines the training of corps units in training and exercises, the attitude of soldiers and officers to the quality of training of corps troops, as well as the participation of troops of the Australian-new Zealand army corps in the repulse of the Turkish offensive on the Suez canal in February 1915. An overview of the actions of the landing command to concentrate ANZAC forces in Mudros Bay (Lemnos) before the start of the landing at Gallipoli is given. The article makes extensive use of archival materials of the Australian War Memorial and British archives, the official history of Australia’s participation in world war I, diary entries and letters of Australians and new Zealanders who participated in the first convoy from Australia to Alexandria (Egypt), Russian and foreign research on the initial stage of the Gallipoli operation of the allied forces of the Entente against the Ottoman Empire..
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
2

Mikhailov, V. V. "MOBILISATION IN AUSTRALIA AND THE FORMATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND CORPS (ANZAC) IN 1914." Scientific Notes of V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. Historical science 6(72), no. 2 (2020): 95–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.37279/2413-1741-2020-6-2-95-104.

Full text
Abstract:
The author studies the history of formation of the Australian-new Zealand army corps (ANZAC) formations after the beginning of the First world war. The mobilization activities of the governments of Australia and New Zealand, the reaction of societies in these countries to the world war and participation in it, the features of recruitment of the Australian Imperial Force (AIS) and the new Zealand expeditionary force, the characteristics of the corps command are studied. It shows the main events during the transport of the first convoy with ANZAC troops to training camps in Egypt in the autumn of 1914, the victory of the Australian cruiser Sydney over the German raider – light cruiser Emden during the AIS convoy. Special attention is paid to the connection of events of formation and transport ANZAC with Russia – the presence in the body of Russian emigrants volunteers, and participation in the protection of the convoy and against German raiders in the Pacific and Indian oceans warships of the Russian Navy, «Pearl» and «Askold». The article uses archival materials of the Australian War Memorial and English archives, diary entries and letters of participants of the first convoy from Australia to Alexandria (Egypt).
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
3

Derby, Mark, and David Lowe. "Douglas Waddell Jolly (1904–1983) – New Zealand pioneer of modern battlefield surgery." Journal of Medical Biography 28, no. 4 (August 31, 2018): 224–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0967772018754940.

Full text
Abstract:
New Zealand-born surgeon Douglas Jolly was studying in London at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. He joined a British volunteer medical team and in December 1936 was placed in charge of a mobile medical unit of Spain’s Republican Army. For the following two years, he took part in every major battle of the war, operating as close as possible to the front line. In that time he made significant contributions to trauma surgery, especially for abdominal injuries, and developed a ‘three-points-forward’ triage system. He described these medical innovations in a handbook which became highly influential among Allied medical services in Second World War, Korea and Vietnam. Jolly served with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) in the Middle East during Second World War and was awarded a military OBE.After the war, he became Chief Medical Officer of Queen Mary’s Orthopaedic Hospital, Roehampton. He has been described as ‘a pioneer in the field of surgical treatment for trauma and one of the most notable war surgeons of the 20th century.’ In belated local recognition of this innovative and dedicated pioneer of trauma surgery, a memorial to Jolly will be unveiled in his home town of Cromwell, New Zealand in 2018.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
4

Czerwińska, Anna. "Between Anzac Day and Waitangi Day." Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 52, no. 4 (December 20, 2017): 427–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/stap-2017-0019.

Full text
Abstract:
Abstract This paper discusses the historical background and significance of the two most important national holidays in New Zealand: Waitangi Day and Anzac Day. Waitangi Day is celebrated on the 6th February and it commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between British representatives and a number of Māori chiefs in 1840. Following the signing of the treaty New Zealand became effectively a British colony. Anzac Day is celebrated on 25th April, i.e., on the anniversary of the landing of soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey in 1915, during World War One. There are three major differences between these two holidays: the process of those days becoming national holidays, the level of contestation, and the changing messages they have carried. The present study analyzes the national discourse around Anzac Day and Waitangi Day in New Zealand, and attempts to reveal how the official New Zealand government rhetoric about national unity becomes deconstructed. The following analysis is based on a selection of online articles from the New Zealand Herald and Stuff published in Auckland and Wellington, respectively. Both cities are populated by multi-ethnic groups, with Auckland featuring the largest Māori population.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
5

Lewincamp, Sophie, and Lisa Yeats. "Intergenerational War Collection Management: The Returned and Services League, Australian New Zealand Army Corps Village in Narrabeen." International Journal of the Inclusive Museum 9, no. 1 (2015): 7–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.18848/1835-2014/cgp/v09i01/44507.

Full text
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
6

Beck, Douglas, and John Lord. "Design and Production of ANZAC Frigates for the RAN and RNZN: Progress Towards International Competitiveness." Journal of Ship Production 14, no. 02 (May 1, 1998): 85–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.5957/jsp.1998.14.2.85.

Full text
Abstract:
ANZAC, the acronym of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, is the name given to a new class often frigates under construction for the Royal Australian and Royal New Zealand Navies. The prime contract was awarded in November 1989, and a separate design sub-contract was awarded concurrently. HMAS ANZAC, the first of eight ships for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), was delivered in March 1996. HMNZS Te Kaha, the first of two ships for the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN), was delivered in May 1997. The paper describes the collaborative process, involving the Australian Department of Defence, the New Zealand Ministry of Defence, and Defence Industry in Australia, New Zealand and overseas, for the design and production of the ships. The need to maximise the level of Australian and New Zealand industrial involvement, led to a process of international competition between prospective suppliers, and significant configuration changes from the contract design baseline. Delivery of the first ship was extended to accommodate the revised approach, and in the event only five months additional time proved necessary. Although formal acceptance of HMAS ANZAC is not due until the completion of operational test and evaluation, the contractor's sea trials have successfully demonstrated the performance exceeding the requirements and the expectations of the RAN. The paper also describes the growing maturity of Australia's naval shipbuilding industry. It suggests some lessons learned from the project, and identifies issues important for the further development and sustainability of the industry. It advocates the need for agreed methodologies to evaluate the productivity of the various elements of the shipbuilding process, and to help ensure the establishment and maintenance of world competitive costs and quality.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
7

Mikhailov, V. V. "HOW THE ANZAC LEGEND WAS CREATED: MORNING OF APRIL 25, 1915." Scientific Notes of V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. Historical science 7 (73), no. 2 (2021): 112–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.37279/2413-1741-2021-7-2-112-129.

Full text
Abstract:
The article is devoted to the study of the first combat operations of the Australian-new Zealand army corps. It shows measures to ensure the surprise of the landing, a diversionary maneuver of the fleet in Saros Bay, the landing of three echelons of troops on the morning of April 25, 1915, on the beaches of Anzac Cove and North beach, the reasons for the rapid success and subsequent failures of the paratroopers. The reasons for the weak interaction of the landing units, the lack of artillery support, delays in the landing of the third echelon and the arrival of reinforcements to the front areas of the advance of troops are analyzed. It also shows the actions of the Turkish officer responsible for the defense of the Anzac landing site – Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who showed determination and did not allow the defenders of Gallipoli to retreat under the blows of superior forces of Australian and new Zealand troops. The article uses archival materials from the Australian War Memorial and British archives, diary entries and letters from Australians and new Zealanders, Russian and foreign research on the initial stage of the Gallipoli operation
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
8

Vietrynskyi, I. "Specifics of the International Political Position of the Commonwealth of Australia in the first half of the ХХ-th century." Problems of World History, no. 13 (March 18, 2021): 133–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.46869/2707-6776-2021-13-6.

Full text
Abstract:
The paper focuses on the initial stage of the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the process of its establishing as an independent State. The international political context for the development of the country, from the period of creation of the Federation to the beginning of the Second World War, is primarily viewed. The Commonwealth’s international position, its place and role in the regional and global geopolitical processes of the early XX century, in particular in the context of its relations with Great Britain, are analyzed. The features of the transformation of British colonial policies on the eve of the First World War are examined. The specifics of the UK system of relations with Australia, as well as other dominions, are being examined. The features of status of the dominions in the British Empire system are shown. The role of the dominions and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Australia in the preparatory process for the First World War, as well as the peculiarities of its participation in hostilities, is analyzed. The significance of the actions of the First World War on the domestic political situation in Australia, as well as its impact on dominions relations with the British Empire, is revealed. The history of the foundation of the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and its participation in imperial forces on the frontline of the First World War is analyzed. The success and failure of its fighters, as well as the role of ANZAC, in the process of formation an Australian political nation are analyzed. The economic, humanitarian and international political consequences of the First World War for the Commonwealth of Australia are examined, as well as the influence of these consequences on the structure of relations between the dominions and the British Empire. The socio-economic situation of the Commonwealth of Australia on the eve of World War II, in particular the impact of the Great depression on the development of the country as a whole and its internal political situation in particular, is analyzed. The ideological, military-strategic and international political prerequisites for Australia’s entry into the Second World War are being considered.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
9

Wallis, Jaime, and Malcolm Boyle. "From stretcher bearer to “Paramedic”." Australasian Journal of Paramedicine 11, no. 3 (May 5, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.33151/ajp.11.3.11.

Full text
Abstract:
In Australia and New Zealand we have recently commemorated ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day, a day where we honour and respect past and present service men and women who have served for both Australia and New Zealand. The day itself marks the anniversary of the landing of troops at ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey (formally part of the Ottoman Empire) on April 25th 1915. Sadly, this campaign was poorly planned and resourced, nevertheless, it was seen as one of the defining days of the two countries young existence (1, 2). One of the many stories that most Australians or New Zealanders would be able to recount from this landing is that of Simpson and his donkey and that of Henderson and his donkey.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
10

Bevan-Smith, John. "Lest We Remember/“Lest We Forget”: Gallipoli as Exculpatory Memory." Journal of New Zealand Studies, no. 18 (December 18, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.26686/jnzs.v0i18.2191.

Full text
Abstract:
Before the build-up to the centenary of the 1915 invasion of Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula begins in earnest, I thought it might be timely to interrogate the notion that those of us who live in Australasia are confronted with every Anzac Day: that it was on April 25, 1915, the day the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (Anzacs) landed at Gallipoli as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, that the consciousness of nationhood was born in Australia and New Zealand, This foundational idea, with specific application to Australia, was first published nine years after the event by Charles Bean, the Australian Government’s official World War I historian who is also regarded as having created the Anzac legend. On a broader view, World War I was, for Bean, about freedom, and more broadly still, about the survival of civilisation.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
11

Kelley, Lindsay. "Invert Syrup, Feminist Snap: Anzac Biscuits and Feminist Resistance to Imperial Logics." Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 9, no. 1 (April 5, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v9i1.38439.

Full text
Abstract:
Baked for Anzac Day in April but eaten all year, Anzac biscuits memorialize the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) participation in the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I. The chemical and culinary capacities of one of the biscuit’s key ingredients, golden syrup, offer strategies for figuring snaps, breaks, and refusals. Golden syrup catalyzes a feminist digestion of a food often perceived as culturally conservative or nationalistic. Sara Ahmed describes “feminist snap” as a moment of fury that confronts and changes history. Snap can additionally refer to crispy batter-based desserts that often call for golden syrup. Classified as an “invert syrup,” golden syrup was formulated from sugar refining waste products that were fed to pigs before being adapted for human consumption. “Invert” refers to the assessment of syrups using a beam of light, which inverts its angle of rotation as fructose and glucose separate. Reading the chemistry of inverting sugar alongside the feminist-led “anti-Anzac” day movement of the 1980s, this paper proposes that edible everyday militarisms might be snapped, inverted, spun, and reshaped. Anzac biscuits bring domestic everyday militarisms into Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand kitchens.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
12

Steriopoulos, Effie, Catheryn Khoo, Ho Yin Wong, John Hall, and Marion Steel. "Heritage tourism brand experiences: The influence of emotions and emotional engagement." Journal of Vacation Marketing, February 16, 2023, 135676672311529. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13567667231152930.

Full text
Abstract:
Despite growing research on the role of emotions in tourist experiences, there is limited research on how emotional engagement enhances the brand experience at tourist heritage sites, in particular when negative or mixed emotions are involved. The aim of the research is to explore how emotional engagement influences heritage tourism brand experiences (HTBEs). This study provides an understanding of the type of mixed emotions that are experienced by visitors during heritage tourism brand engagement and how their emotional engagement influences HTBEs. Data for this study came from 36 interviews conducted with visitors who participated in an HTBE – the Australian New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) Gallipoli; and supported by other data triangulation methods including photos, journals and memo analyses. Findings not only reveal several mixed emotions that influence the heritage brand experience but also uncover the factors (such as story-showing) that elicit these mixed emotions. The research makes an explicit theoretical contribution through a heritage tourist brand framework that explains the process of emotional engagement during heritage tourist brand experiences.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
13

"Sir John McMichael, 25 July 1904 - 3 March 1993." Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 41 (November 1995): 282–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1995.0017.

Full text
Abstract:
A quote that says much about John McMichael comes from his own autobiographical notes: ‘I come from a materially poor branch of a Galloway family’. He was born on 25 July 1904 in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, son of James and Margaret McMichael. There were two older sisters and two elder brothers, and he was something of an afterthought. His father ran a farm on the edge of the village and was also the local butcher. A ‘God-fearing, generous man’, he was not a good manager of his limited resources. Until he was ten years old John McMichael went to a school run under the patronage of the Lady of the Manor; but in 1914 this school was closed and he transferred to Girthon public school under its headmaster, William Learmonth, who was to have a major influence on the young McMichael. Learmonth’s son, eight years McMichael’s senior, became Sir James Learmonth, the well-known surgeon. Learmonth was an exceedingly capable teacher to find in a small village school and his pupils clearly felt the benefit. At the age of 14 there was a debate in the McMichael household about the next stage in John’s education. His mother, supported by Learmonth, decided he must continue and he moved to Kirkcudbright Academy, eight miles away, a hard and hilly bicycle ride. Here he blossomed, taking first place in most subjects, and ending up as Dux of the school. His decision to read medicine was influenced by two chance factors. He often spent his holidays with a fisherman on an island in the Fleet Bay where the solitary house was occupied by a doctor from the Indian Medical Service during his leaves. On wet days his medical books opened up exciting prospects in the schoolboy’s enquiring mind. During World War I a maternal cousin, Col. George Home, C.B.E., M.D., of the New Zealand Army Medical Corps, spent his leaves with the family and kindled a broad interest in science and medicine.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
14

Barnsdale, Liam. "Trooping the (School) Colour." M/C Journal 26, no. 1 (March 14, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2970.

Full text
Abstract:
Introduction Throughout the early and mid-twentieth century, cadet training was a feature of many secondary schools and educational establishments across Australia, with countless young men between the ages of 14 and 18 years of age undergoing military training, ostensibly in preparation for service in Australia’s armed forces upon their coming of age. Unlike earlier in the century, when cadet training was mandatory for all males within the relevant age range, during the Second World War cadet detachments could only be formed and maintained by secondary schools for pupils attending those schools. Additionally, the Australian Army provided so little financial support to school cadet detachments during the conflict that schools had to rely on the parents of their pupils to purchase their sons’ not inexpensive cadet uniforms, with a result that only a limited number of schools could afford to maintain a cadet detachment, and almost every schools that could do so made enrolment in their detachments voluntary for their pupils. Counterbalancing these material obstacles, however, was the threat of the ongoing conflict and the demands for trained soldiers both overseas and within Australia, which resulted in school cadet training becoming increasingly popular between 1939 and 1945, with many schools across Australia either establishing new cadet detachments or expanding their existing cadet detachments in order to contribute to their nation’s war effort. Not only did the Second World War increase the number of cadet detachments among educational establishments, but cadet training became more diverse and varied both within and between schools. Owing to their preoccupation with maintaining both the Australian Imperial Force and a defence force against a potential invasion of Australia, the Australian Army’s supervision of and contribution to cadet training became more sporadic than it had been in peacetime. As a result, school headmasters became increasingly powerful in their discretion to direct the cadet training that went on at their schools, with the Australian Army providing little to no input to or supervision of the day-to-day training at the myriad of cadet detachments across the nation. This state of affairs allowed schools, and the educators who ran them, an unprecedented amount of freedom to enact their own idealised version of military training through their cadet detachments, resulting in a diverse range of training syllabi, organisational practices, and uniforms. Unlike in other nations such as New Zealand, Australian schools’ cadet uniforms were not issued by the Australian Army, but instead were designed and purchased by the individual cadet detachments, with the Australian Army only providing official recognition and partial funding for the designs. Under this system, Australian schools designed a diverse range of uniforms for their cadet detachments, tailoring them to suit their individual conceptions of what cadet training should contain and how a cadet detachment should appear. This resulted in cadet detachments clad in uniforms that reflected the ideals of the schools to which they were attached, with the training practices and identities of a school reflected in the design of its cadet uniform. This article will examine two prevalent influences behind the design of Australian school cadet uniforms during the Second World War – the competing prioritisation of smartness and practicality, and the range of identities and loyalties which schools attempted to inculcate in their pupils. In the process, it will be argued that these variations in cadet uniform designs reflect the diversity of practices and ideology within male secondary education in Australia during the 1940s. Uniforms for Purpose Despite the limitations imposed by wartime shortages, a school’s priorities for their cadet training could still be expressed through their design of uniforms. For many, the range of priorities can be summarised as a split between smartness and toughness. Some establishments designed their cadet uniforms on traditional ideals of rigid sartorial orderliness, tailoring them to be pleasing to the eye when paraded in public. Others disregarded smartness in favour of hard-wearing uniforms more suited to rigorous physical training under a variety of climactic conditions, emphasising comfort and durability above appearance. Schools did not openly state that their choice of uniform was motivated by a desire to have their cadets appear impressive on the parade ground. However, many voiced their praise for their cadet detachments’ appearances in public parades. One example of this can be found in the June 1940 edition of Terrace, the magazine of Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, in which the cadet training column finished by proudly declaring that “the appearance of the cadets and their military bearing called forth expressions of praise from all who saw them marching in the Corpus Christi procession at NC” (“G.T. Corps Jottings” 5). Similar evidence of a school’s prioritisation of smartness and presentability in their cadet training can also be found in numerous contemporary descriptions of cadet training by the cadets themselves. One anonymous pupil at Sydney Church of England Grammar School described the hardships that the school’s cadets faced in maintaining their uniforms – a khaki combination of woollen slouch hat, tunic with brass buttons, brown leather ‘Sam Browne’ belt and trousers with a blue stripe down each leg. In a lengthy poem describing many aspects of school life, the pupil’s ‘Song of Shore’ described how “of each cadet the heart is set on being clean and smart; A fleck of dust, a speck of rust, will break his sergeant's heart” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). These demands for cleanliness and smartness weighed heavily on a cadet, with the author lamenting how “he cleans his boots, he cleans his belt, he cleans his bits of brass: his Brasso goes to chapel and his Kiwi into class; but still they say, ‘Put it away! To Friday drill you go!’ And button-sticks in period six are dangerous things to show” (‘A Song of Shore’ 131). Given that this context of uniform maintenance is the only description of cadet training in this poem, the emphasis placed on sartorial orderliness at schools such as Sydney Church of England Grammar School was clearly strong enough to eclipse all other aspects of training in the eyes of those subjected to it. Uniforms designed to visually impress, however, often wore out quite quickly under the harsh conditions of cadet training. One cadet at Geelong College noted how after an afternoon of instruction on the school oval in “a comfortable spot in the rain and wind … my well-tailored uniform is sopping with either sweat or rain according to the consistent weather of these parts. My chin-strap has lost all its flavour and generally I feel most inefficient” (“Chank” 31). The short life of stylistically-prioritised uniforms was often exacerbated by the difficulty of obtaining replacement items of clothing under wartime conditions. In 1941, the cadet uniforms of Hale School, Western Australia – presented in fig. 1 and consisting of slouch hat, woollen khaki tunic, Khaki drill breeches and tall leather gaiters – had been reduced in number and quality to such an extent that one boy described the process of selecting uniforms at the beginning of each year as “scramble day”, when, “after trying on various clothing you begin to wonder how many deformed people were in the corps before you” (“Lance-Corporal” 96). The cadet elaborated by lamented how “pick[ing] out the right hat is like winning the Charities, and all you can do is to hope for the best next year” (“Lance-Corporal” 96), and “on being issued with your hat badge you will say confidently, ‘Well, at least this must fit.’ But don't be optimistic; it is sure to have the clip missing” (“Lance-Corporal” 97). The shortage of serviceable uniforms became so acute that by 1943 the annual ‘Cadet Notes’ article in the school’s magazine The Cygnet announced that “it would be greatly appreciated if Old Boys who have any part of a uniform, would make it available” (“Cadets” Cygnet 20). This sentiment was echoed the following year by an anonymous cadet’s cartoon (fig. 2), highlighting the deplorable state of the school’s cadet uniforms after so many years of use, with frayed hems, baggy seams, and, most significantly, a severe shortage of sizes which fitted the average cadet (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74). This, when compared with the formal photographs of cadets published by the school in an earlier edition of the Cygnet, seen in fig. 1, gives a clear indication of the disparity between the image that schools intended to project and the and that which cadets perceived. Fig. 1: Hale School cadet uniforms as presented by the school in 1939 (“Officers and N.C.Os.” 55) Fig. 2: Hale School cadet uniforms as perceived by a cadet in 1944 (“Uniforms for ‘B’ Company” 74) For many schools, however, the ideal cadet uniform was simple, easily-maintained and durable, often drawing inspiration from contemporary, rather than traditional, military uniforms. When designing a uniform for their newly-established cadet detachment in 1939, Brisbane Boys’ College stated categorically that “the first consideration was smartness” and that “the preservation of that smartness will be the duty of every cadet” (“Cadet Corps” 41). However, while other schools chose stiff and heavy woollen cadet uniforms, the committee appointed by the College to decide on a uniform opted for a light combination of felt hat, khaki drill jacket, and shorts, “similar in design to that of the Darwin Mobile Force”, a new Australian Army formation created the previous year intended to defend Australia’s northern coastline from invasion, “which looked so smart when that force marched through the city early in the year” (“Cadet Corps” 41-42). When further explaining their choice, the College argued that “shorts, we consider, are more serviceable for the Queensland climate” (“Cadet Corps” 42). Brisbane Boys’ College was not the only establishment to be impressed by new military formations and their heralding of a new form of warfare. Newcastle Boys’ High School’s cadet uniform deviated from those of other schools’ cadet detachments by including a navy blue beret in place of the ubiquitous felt ‘slouch hat’. This choice of headwear, coupled with the School’s unusual decision to replace the normal khaki items of clothing with a field grey battledress-style jacket and slacks, was so similar to that worn by the armoured divisions both in Australia and Britain that when the Newcastle Sun published a picture of four Newcastle cadets wearing their new uniforms, they jocularly warned their readers that “these are not members of the Tank Corps” (“High School Cadet Corps” 7). Evidently, while some schools opted for a more traditionally smart design for their cadet uniforms, others chose to emulate more modern military uniform designs, even to the point where their uniforms lost all similarity to those traditionally worn by cadet detachments in Australia. It was not through the emulation of contemporary Australian Army uniforms that schools implemented practical uniform components in place of stylish ones. When several independent Roman Catholic schools in New South Wales applied to form cadet units and intended to adopt cadet uniforms in a variety of colours with brimless, forage cap headdress, Australia’s Military Board directed Captain McConnel, the Staff Officer Commanding Senior Cadets for New South Wales, “to invite schools again to reconsider the uniforms they have submitted with a view to their adoption of the Australian Hat and Khaki materials” (McConnel 1). McConnel acknowledged that “particular uniforms are not stipulated”, but claimed “khaki to be most suitable and economical for field training while the Australian Hat gives greater protection from the sun”, which was a factor of “considerable importance” as “work in the open is one of the main objects of cadet training” (McConnel 1). However, despite McConnel’s emphatic pleas to the institutions to reconsider their uniforms, only two of the eleven schools chose to alter their uniforms to suit the Military Board’s recommendations. The remainder either compromised by retaining their forage caps but adopting McConnel’s recommendation of using khaki material for their uniforms, or, as was the case with Marist Brothers’ High School, Darlinghurst, wrote in response to McConnel’s letter stating that they found “no reason for altering the design initially submitted”, and persisted with their application (Frederic 1). This case demonstrates that while dispassionate logic could motivate schools to design practical uniforms resistant to the wear and tear produced by strenuous outdoor cadet training in the Australian climate, these considerations were often outweighed by the subjective ideological motivations behind educators’ desires to adopt attractively smart cadet uniforms that were expensive and ill-suited to physical training. Evidently, educators’ personal desires to make their cadets, and as a result their schools, appear impressively smart and orderly were a powerful motivation behind not only their choice of uniform but also their support for cadet training in its entirety. These motivations could and frequently did outweigh practical considerations, to the point where the appearance of a cadet detachment, and thereby that of the cadet detachment’s school, was considered more important than the training it provided. Uniforms as Identity The division between concepts of cadet training held by the Australian Army and the highly diverse forms of training practiced by individual schools extended beyond differences of opinion over the relative merits of smartness and practicality expressed by cadet uniforms. A cadet uniform not only reflected educators’ intentions regarding the contents of their training, but also reflected the values of the group identity they wished to immerse their boys in, and the overarching group to which this identity owed its loyalty. The best example of uniforms reflecting a cadet detachment’s loyalty can be seen in the widespread adoption of uniforms that emulated Australian Army uniforms almost exactly. Although Australian cadet detachments were not issued with official Service Dress uniforms until 1945, many detachments’ uniforms emulated the Service Dress’s design and material down to the ubiquitous wide-brimmed ‘slouch hat’ or ‘Australian hat’ worn by the Australian Army in both the First and Second World Wars. Brother RJ McCartney, “the nominal C.O.” of the cadet detachment at Christian Brothers’ College Ipswich, specifically described his detachment’s uniform to the Queensland Times in 1944 as “similar to that issued to Army personnel” after declaring that “the training [cadets] receive will be most useful to them should they join one of the fighting forces later” (“95 Boys” 2). The popularity of this design cannot be attributed solely to the arguments made by the Military Board for its practicality, and the symbolic power of these uniforms raised the cadet detachments from insular, extra-curricular organisations to a unified whole, connected to the Commonwealth’s war effort through their uniforms and the martial identities they espoused. Fig. 3: A contemporary drawing of Brisbane Boys’ College cadet badge from 1939 (“Cadet Corps” 42) Not all Australian educational establishments, however, chose to emulate the Australian Army uniform in their cadet detachments’ uniforms, with many adopting uniforms that emphasised school or local identities above national identity. Most schools expressed their local identity through the implementation of school colours in their hat bands or ‘puggaree’ or designed insignia for their cadet uniforms based on school insignia. The cadet detachment at Brisbane Boys College adopted a badge that was nearly identical to the College badge, seen in fig. 3, albeit with a crown in place of the book (“Cadet Corps” 42). This alteration brought the design into alignment with common practice in military insignia, but it could also be viewed as symbolic representation of the difference between the College and the cadet detachment – whereas the College’s primary objective was to educate, the cadet detachment’s objective was to instil a sense of patriotism and duty. The most prominent examples of schools deviating in this manner can be found among Presbyterian schools, many of which chose to emphasise their Scottish ancestry instead of their Australian nationality. One such school was Scotch College in Claremont, Western Australia, where in August 1939, after “several unsuccessful attempts to secure a uniform dress for the cadets”, “the corps fitted out with uniforms which made the boys look like trained soldiers … which consisted of a Cameron kilt, with a kangaroo-skin sporran, a khaki tunic and glengarrie [sic]” (“Cadets” Scotch 16), which gave the detachment the appearance of a highland regiment of the British Army. After being issued with their new uniforms and instructed on their wearing, an event that was satirically recalled later that year by a cadet asking the headmaster what was worn beneath the kilt, the cadets were addressed by the school’s headmaster Mr Anderson, who “mention[ed] the fine example set by our predecessors, which example, he knew, we would endeavour to live up to” (“Cadets” Scotch 16). A similar uniform was worn by The Scots College, Sydney, prior to and during the Second World War. The College’s cadet uniform, shown in fig. 4, was just as rife with Scottish motifs as the uniform of Scotch College, including a kilt which one anonymous cadet described as “eleven yards of pleats, folds, buckles, buttons and straps all mixed up” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). The Scots College’s uniform incorporated more colonial aspects than their West Australian contemporary’s uniform, however, with the glengarry and khaki tunic replaced by a Blancoed-white pith helmet and dark green standing-collared jacket with hooks and eyes that, according to the anonymous cadet, “were typically scotch”, in that “they would not give in” (“C.S.R., IVa” 91). Despite the free issue of Service Dress by the Australian Army in 1945, the College maintained its distinctly Scottish cadet uniform, albeit with the pith helmet replaced by a glengarry cap. So strong was the College’s prioritisation of its colonial ancestral identity above any contemporary Australian national identity that the Sun newspaper described them as “Black Watch juniors” when publishing a photograph of them parading “in support of the War Loan Campaign” in October 1941, seen in fig. 4 (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Although these schools formed the minority in espousing divergent local identities above a centralised national identity, is these exceptions to the broad consensus which reflect the diverse nature of not only cadet training but secondary education within Australia in the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, this diversity was only revealed due to the refusal of the Australian Army to issue free uniforms to cadet detachments, with the resulting absence of a centralised identity leading to a vacuum in which schools decided upon an identity with which to imbue their pupils through the medium of cadet uniforms. Fig. 4: The Scots College cadets parading through Sydney, as presented by the Sun (“Black Watch Juniors” 3). Conclusion The Australian Army’s refusal to issue a free, standardised cadet uniform to secondary school cadet detachments prevented many educational establishments from establishing their own cadet detachment. However, this policy allowed those schools that did establish a detachment to clothe their members in a manner that they believed would align with the school’s unique conceptions of both what cadet training should consist of and how a cadet detachment should be presented to the world. As a result of this freedom, Australian secondary school cadet uniforms were influenced by a wide range of practical and ideological factors, with a diverse range of uniform designs reflecting an equally diverse range of thinking around cadet training. Some schools preferred a cadet uniform to be tough and suited to strenuous outdoor use under harsh climatic conditions, with Brisbane Boys’ College modelling their uniform after the recently-formed Darwin Mobile Force and incorporating shorts and a wide-brimmed Australian hat of the type recommended by the Australian Army for its value in shielding its wearer from the sun. Other cadet uniforms, such as those adopted by many Roman Catholic schools in Sydney, emphasised sartorial orderliness and visual splendour, incorporating unusual colours and forage caps to showcase their cadets and their school while emphasising their institutions’ individuality, against the Australian Army’s recommendations for durability and practicality. Similarly, a school’s cadet uniform could reflect its ideological objectives, revealing the identity it aimed to immerse its pupils in. The wide range of schools’ cadet uniform headdress alone, from ‘slouch hats’ to glengarry and forage caps to pith helmets, reveals the many split loyalties and ideals held by Australian schools during the Second World War between imperial, national, local, and religious identities and ethos. However, despite Australian Schools’ diverse and meticulously curated choices in cadet uniforms, cadets’ contemporary descriptions of their uniforms reveal that the intentions behind the uniforms’ designs were often entirely lost on those who wore them. Many cadets overlooked the lofty educational and ideological intentions behind their educators’ choices and instead only took note of their ridiculous, impractical, and uncomfortable aspects. This difference in perception, with educators praising and pupils decrying their cadet uniforms, reveals the performative nature of the entire uniform design process, with schools designing their cadet detachments’ uniforms not for those wearing them but for any third party who might view them. As such, schools’ overtures regarding the practicality, smartness and identity of their uniforms were not the result of the schools’ established practices, but the values with which the schools wished to be associated, with cadet uniforms acting as the medium through which these values would be communicated to the wider world. Images “Black Watch Juniors in City Parade.” The Sun 10 Oct. 1941: 3. “Officers and N.C.Os. of the Cadet Corps, 1939.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 19.3 (June 1939): 55. “Uniforms for ‘B’ Company. Only Two Sizes 2 Large OR 2 Small.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 14.4 (June 1944): 74. References “A Song of Shore” The Torch-Bearer: The Magazine of the Sydney Church of England Grammar School 43.2 (1 Sep. 1939): 130-131. “Cadets.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13.3 (June 1943): 19-20. “Cadets.” The Scotch College Reporter 32 (Dec. 1939): 16-17. “Cadet Corps.” The Portal: The Magazine of the Brisbane Boys’ College Dec. 1939: 41-43. “Chank”; “A Day in the Ranks.” The Pegasus: The Journal of The Geelong College 37.1 (June 1946): 30-31. “C.S.R., IVa”; “A Bonny Wee Scotsman.” The Scotsman: A Record of The Scots College, Bellevue Hill, Sydney 32.3 (May 1946): 91. “G.T. Corps Jottings.” Terrace: Quarterly Review, Published by Christian Brothers’ College Gregory Terrace, Brisbane, Queensland 3.2 (24 June 1940): 5. “High School Cadet Corps.” The Newcastle Sun 4 June 1940: 7. “Lance-Corporal”; “Scramble Day.” The Cygnet: Hale School Magazine 13 (5 June 1941): 96-97. “95 Boys Receive Training in School Cadet Corps.” The Queensland Times 21 Aug. 1944: 2. Memoranda Brother Frederic to Captain McConnel. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 7 April 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176. Captain McConnel to Director CBC Waverley, CBC Lewisham, CBC Darlinghurst, MBC Darlinghurst, MBC Randwick, MBC Kogarah, MBC Parramatta, MBC Church Hill, DLSC Ashfield, DLSC Marrickville, HCC Ryde, SJC Hunter's Hill. “Cadets – Educational establishments – Approval to form senior cadet detachments – Roman Catholic schools.” 13 March 1941. Australian War Memorial, Ref. AWM61 426/2/176.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
15

Kennedy, Ümit. "Stitchers of Instagram." M/C Journal 26, no. 6 (November 26, 2023). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2994.

Full text
Abstract:
Embroidery: A Subversive History Embroidery has a long history as a woman’s craft. Traditionally, the gendered history of embroidery as domestic, practical (utilitarian), and relational has placed it firmly in the category of craft, resulting in its exclusion from the male-dominated arena of art in public space (Emery; Durham; Jefferies). This traditional view of embroidery, and textile work in general, has been thoroughly challenged over the last 60 years. The second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s brought women’s textile work, and its private, domestic, relational subjects and lives, into the public arena: into art galleries and public spaces, challenging traditional notions of what constitutes art, and highlighting the subversive act of women making (Emery; Jefferies; Parker). Women have been using “fancy work”, as embroidery was called, as overt acts of defiance, rebellion, social justice, care for self and others, and as a collective means of making sense of the world and changing it for good, for generations (Davidson; Minahan and Cox; Emery; Sawden and Etaati; Robertson and Vinebaum; Hackney; Vyas). The suffragettes famously used embroidery in their banners and sashes in their fight for the woman’s right to vote (Helland). In the 1970s, collectives such as the Sydney-based Women’s Domestic Needlework Group brought the work of everyday ordinary women into a public collection and exhibition of art (Emery). The exhibition highlighted the value of women making things together as a normal part of their everyday lives, and it positioned their domestic textile work as material artifacts of knowledge and significance worthy of observation, recognition, and analysis in public space. More recently, there has been a resurgence of young women engaging in textile crafts online signaling a “new energy” with radical potential (Hackney 170; Robertson and Vinebaum; Jefferies; Minahan and Cox). These women are socially engaged and tech-savvy, gathering online and in-person to use craft to explore and critique their everyday lives and experiences (Minahan and Cox; Hackney). Women are using the Internet to make space to gather, to create, to develop language, knowledge, and to generate change. From forums and threads to networked digital media (see Meikle and Young) such as Facebook and Instagram (see Leaver et al.), the material gallery is now online: a public space for collective voice and representation in progress. The international embroidery community on Instagram create art in dialogue with, and in reference to, each other. The art being created is collaborative as it was in the 1970s, relational, intimate and intentional, subversive, and confronting. It falls in a category known as “craftivism” (Greer; Corbett; Jefferies; Emery; Hackney). Stitchers of Instagram reflect what Fiona Hackney refers to as a new “super-connected (informed, skilled, reflexive) amateur” (170) who engages in “the quiet activism of everyday making” (169). In this article, I focus on my experience participating in the embroidery community on Instagram. Uniquely situated at a time of deep global and personal anxiety, I explore my experience of using embroidery as a form of self-care, to process multiple lockdowns with small children and the death of my father. Embroidery gave me a purpose, it enveloped me in community, it offered me a sense of value and worth, and it connected me with a group of people experiencing the same thing at the same time. I spent two years embroidering and one year sharing my embroidery on Instagram using the account @auburnevening. This article comprises an autoethnographic process (see Ellis; Hollman Jones; Hughes and Pennington) in which I reflect on my experience of embroidering and analyse twelve months of being on Instagram, consisting of 300 posts, thousands of comments and interactions, and many deep and long-lasting relationships developed through private messages. I explore the role of making and online community in self-care, as a collective way to engage with, and respond to, personal and global lived experience. Embroidery as Therapy The history of embroidery as therapeutic is broad-ranging and well-documented. In the sixteenth century, Mary Queen of Scots famously used embroidery to pass her time in captivity. Mary was held captive from 1569 to 1585, and during this time she embroidered a series of “veiled symbols” demonstrating “the resistant pride of a woman with few other ways to assert control over her existence” (V&A Museum). In more recent history, embroidery was used as a therapeutic application to treat British, Australian, and New Zealand soldiers suffering from shell-shock (Davidson). Returning WWI soldiers who experienced combat trauma were encouraged to take up “fancy work” (embroidery) “as a form of therapy and source of income” (Davidson 390). There are also “accounts of prisoners of war using needlework to cope with the hardships of captivity”, demonstrating that “creative activity of this type can be used to deal with extreme adversity” (391). Like these returned soldiers, I found that embroidery “affords the opportunity to focus attention away from personal ailments and fears, and through the finished product, to confer a sense of worth or even income” (391). In addition to the welcome opportunity to focus on the achievement of making a tangible product, like others I found embroidery to be soothing and peaceful. Nurit Wolk and Michal Bat Or explore the therapeutic aspects of embroidery for adolescent girls in post-hospitalisation boarding schools in Israel between 2020-2022. Among the five themes that they identified, they found that embroidery “inspires a sense of uniqueness and unconventionality … and provides a source of relaxation and tranquility” (14), acting as a “calming”, “soothing”, or “grounding” activity while processing trauma (Wolk and Bat Or). Similarly, Kari Sawden explores Saeedeh Niktab Etaati’s use of embroidery to process and ritualise personal grief during COVID-19 as an Iranian-Canadian (Sawden and Etaati). In their reflexive ethnography Sawden and Etaati explore embroidery as an opportunity to “meditate upon and emotionally grapple with experiences of grief and to make such reflections tangible in a way that allows for their release and the reclamation of personal peace” (2). Like Etaati, my experience of embroidery was profound as it allowed me to reclaim internal peace at a time of personal anguish. I began embroidering at a time when I had seemingly no control over my circumstances, with multiple lockdowns and lengthy periods of COVID restrictions, or over my feelings of intense grief over the death of my father, resulting in acute anxiety attacks that would last multiple days. During this period, embroidery allowed me to switch off in the quiet moments when my grief would visit me and my anxious thoughts were loudest. The creative focus that embroidery requires silenced my thoughts and feelings. While some, like Etaati, use embroidery to explore their feelings, I used embroidery as a respite from my feelings. Embroidery allowed me to focus on the process of making, and to momentarily attribute my worth to my ability to create something beautiful. In my very first post on Instagram, I write auburnevening A new venture to share my evening creations. As a mother of two small children, there is nothing like the long awaited bliss of the evening. After a day full of chaos and noise, I crave the quiet, still evenings, when I pick up my embroidery hoop. There’s nothing like the process of making something beautiful with your hands. I love the way time stands still as I lose myself in the task, the rhythm, the creating. I love the way my brain goes quiet and I forget about all the demands and difficulties of the day. It’s my time. #auburnevening #eveningcreation #embroidery #embroideryart #embroiderydesign #embroiderylove #embroideryhoop #eveningescape #metime #make #create The focus of my work at the time was simply creating beautiful work, and I have never followed a pattern. All my designs are free-form. While some celebrate the role of the pattern, valuing it for its structure (Wolk and Bat Or), and its connection to a collective (such as Etaati’s contribution to the Redwork Embroidery Project; Sawden and Etaati), the fact that I was not bound to a pattern and free to create whatever I wanted in the moment was critical. It gave me a sense of control over my design, and it gave me a sense of freedom, both of which I was lacking in my personal life (with multiple lockdowns, anxiety attacks, and the existential crisis following the death of my father). Not surprisingly, my designs centred on finding beauty in the everyday mundane, something women are skilled at, and something much of the world was thrust into during COVID. My designs, like home, breathe, slow down, and be still, were a direct response to world events – lockdown, personal and collective lack of control, and anxiety. I was performing and embodying a “smell the roses” attitude, which while seemingly superficial when taken on its own was a desperate act of survival during a time of deep personal and social unrest. Fig. 1: My embroideries shared on Instagram as @auburnevening. I experienced a significant increase in positive affect as a direct result of creating something tangible and beautiful. Embroidery gave me a daily focus and purpose, a routine of switching off and creating, which I looked forward to each day. The positive impact of embroidery was lasting, continuing throughout my two-year period of embroidering, which is consistent with studies exploring the ongoing effect of creative pursuits. In their study exploring 658 young adults, Conner, DeYoung, and Silvia found that daily creative activity leads to increased positive affect (feelings of happiness) and flourishing, a state of well-being described as “a state of optimal functioning accompanied by feelings of meaning, engagement, and purpose in life” (Conner et al.; Ryan and Deci). While most studies of this nature explore how mood affects creativity, Conner et al. focus on how creativity affects mood. They suggest that creative pursuits are “intrinsically motivating”, ultimately increasing feelings of happiness and well-being that importantly carry over into the “next-day”, which they call “next-day well-being” and “next-day flourishing”. A significant component of my flourishing was the collective, collaborative, communal experience of creating. Crafting Community and Creative Activism One of the most important aspects of my experience of embroidery was sharing my work on Instagram, and as a result forming connections with others and participating in a community. There are a growing number of women participating in embroidery on Instagram, which reflects the proliferation and resurgence of traditional textile crafts among young women (Minahan and Cox; Robertson and Vinebaum; Jefferies; Hackney). Through posting my embroideries on Instagram I connected with women, both here in Australia, and all over the world. One of my deepest connections was with Mary, a young woman living in Russia, who in addition to processing the experience of COVID was now facing life under sanctions due to the Russian war with Ukraine, and was experiencing a growing sense of despair. Although our contexts and circumstances are completely different – even our experience of the seasons is opposite – we both connected over our shared use of embroidery as a welcome escape from the difficulties we faced in life. Our friendship began with likes and comments but quickly expanded and developed through Instagram’s direct message function. Through embroidery, through our sharing of making online, we not only exchanged information about the craft, but also intimate information about our lives. #embroidery offers women like myself and Mary an opportunity to process, share, and respond to everyday life, and to connect with others doing the same. I shared intimate information about my experience, my feelings, my grief, and my anxiety with the embroidery community on Instagram. Sharing in this way fosters deep connection with others. In the embroidery community on Instagram I found a group of women who were socially conscious, deeply empathetic, brave in their bold and public statements, and deeply affirming of each other. I connected with women over various life experiences, but mostly over the experience of being a woman. I learned about the socio-political issues facing different communities through making. I participated in affirming narratives and experiences and I received enormous affirmation of my work, and in turn myself. At a time when we could not gather or connect in person, we gathered and connected online daily, and supported each other through our personal and collective grief. In one of my posts I write, “I just love the creative space and community on Instagram. You’re all so amazing and it’s a joy every time I get to connect and interact with any of you! I feel so welcomed and encouraged here – thank you ❤️”. In the same post I write that embroidery and the community “really helped me get through 2021 which was one of the darkest years of my life (anyone else? ✋)”. As I experienced, #embroidery continues the long history of women making as a relational act of care towards others (Robertson and Vinebaum; Emery; Vyas). Not only do women use embroidery to create social space and foster social bonds, they also use it to advocate for social change (Robertson and Vinebaum). Women are using textiles like embroidery in spaces like Instagram “to spur interpersonal dialog and exchange, and to educate, build community, and advocate for social change” (3). Minahan and Cox call this a “unique cyber-feminist phenomenon, one of women expressing their own thoughts and reflecting their own circumstances and environment” (Minahan and Cox 10; Florida). The embroidery community on Instagram brings together ordinary young women – amateur hobbyists, who are self-taught – who embody Luckman’s cyber-feminist description as “women-with-attitude” who are “modern, hip, sassy, postfeminist” (36), technology-literate (Minahan and Cox), informed, historically savvy, and reflexive (Hackney 171). Fiona Hackney calls these women the “new amateur”. These women come together in public, “transforming public spaces into shared, dynamic, communal social space” (Robertson and Vinebaum 5) in which “alternative values and ways of living can be imagined and shared, and practical examples for change defined and materialized” (Hackney 187). I argue elsewhere that women have gathered online to create space, share information, and find community for decades, in genres such as blogging (see Morrison) and vlogging (see Kennedy Becoming). Embroidery on Instagram is an example of this, a congregation of women who make as part of their everyday existence. Making is relational and collaborative, and fosters a collective narrative about life, about COVID, about embroidery techniques and process, about motherhood and domesticity and balancing domestic responsibilities with professional pursuits (embroidery is now included in this as a viable small-business and source of income for some). It also fosters a collective, collaborative response to current social issues, like climate change, diversity and inclusion, movements such as Black Lives Matter, events like Pride Month, and current political debates like abortion rights. All of this continues the long history of embroidery as a subversive act. Today’s “fancy work” on Instagram features beautifully embellished and bedazzled swearwords, breasts, and vulvas, for example, messages that continue to promote female empowerment and advocate for all human rights. Embroidery on Instagram is therefore an extension of craft that is “firmly placed in the language of empowerment and liberation” (Jefferies 28). This collective, participatory act of #embroidery can be understood as a type of “craftivism”, “slow activism”, or “quiet activism” (Greer; Williams; Jefferies; Hackney). Betsy Greer defines craftivism as “a way of looking at life where voicing opinions through creativity makes your voice stronger, your compassion deeper and your quest for justice more infinite” (in Jefferies 25). K.A. Williams defines craftivism as “a social activism that explicitly links individual creativity with human based mechanisms of production to broader sociopolitical cultural contexts in an attempt to influence the social world” (305). Craft offers a way of knowing the world (Hardy 176), and for the new amateur, Fiona Hackney suggests, “craft is power” (170). Women on Instagram engage in the “quiet activism of everyday making” (169), which Sarah Corbett suggests is a form of slow activism, “a reflexive action which changes the participant as much as it does the world” (in Jefferies 27). One way in which #stitchersofinstagram continue the subversive act of embroidery is by selling their work on Etsy, through which they experience individual and collective affirmation and continue to challenge traditional notions of craft vs. art. Selling on Etsy An important part of the experience of sharing embroidery on Instagram is the progression that many stitchers make from making to selling their work. It wasn't long before I started sharing my embroidery on Instagram that I too opened an Etsy shop. In one of my posts on Instagram, responding to the #marchmeetthemaker tag, I introduce myself as the face behind @auburnevening. In addition to my introduction and my heart-felt gratitude to the community I had found on the site, I also shared the news about my shop: “I’ve recently opened an Etsy shop, not to become a small business and not to make a profit but simply to supplement this rather expensive hobby 💸 and as a solution to my growing piles of finished hoops that I have no idea what to do with 😂”. As a stay-at-home-mother at the time, as many #stitchersofinstagram are, producing a tangible product with social and financial value had a significant impact on my sense of worth. I only ever earned half the amount I spent on supplies, but for others selling their embroidery is much more successful. It is not surprising that part of the exchange of information and knowledge on Instagram, therefore, is increasingly about content creation, managing the algorithm (see Bishop), setting up a small business, branding and marketing, selling on Etsy (Robertson Embroidery), and generally the labour of creating on social media (see Duffy and Hund; Kennedy Arriving). As others have noted, craft is increasingly a “source of achievement and economic self-sufficiency” (Jefferies 28; Waterhouse), offering “lucrative opportunities” (Robertson Embroidery 87). The opportunity to sell embroidery is celebrated on Instagram as affirming and empowering, although it has been criticised by some. Janis Jefferies argues that the crafting movement is being reconfigured by a neoliberal agenda, which celebrates self-employment and entrepreneurship in the new creative economy (26). Although she argues that this reconfiguration threatens to wipe out 40 years of feminist literature, I suggest that this movement is a contemporary progression. The second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s discussed by Jefferies achieved the phenomenon of moving women’s craft from the private, domestic sphere into the public sphere, and this has continued ever since. As Fiona Hackney writes, “we need to recognize the existence of a new super connected amateur who, informed by a wealth of on- and offline resources … as well as their individual life experiences and expertise, are equally active as they open up new channels of value and exchange by engaging in alternative craft economies and harnessing assets in often surprising, productive ways” (171). Women embroidering on Instagram and selling on Etsy are an example of this. Today’s #stitchersofInstagram are entrepreneurs and small business owners. Responding to a history of unseen, unpaid, undervalued domestic labour, selling “fancy work” on sites like Etsy continues to challenge traditional notions of amateur vs. professional and craft vs. art by generating income from craft. The fact that everyday ordinary women (many of whom are stay-at-home-mothers with small children) are successfully selling their embroideries, often through commissions from strangers, challenges the traditional lack of value associated with women’s craft. Rather than removing embroidery from its gendered identity, or erasing a rich feminist history, the current trend of women making and selling embroidery reflects a postfeminist (see McRobbie; Duffy and Hund) orientation which seeks to re-define women’s work and domestic work as tangible, valuable, paid work. Conclusion Embroidery continues to be a subversive act, bringing women together on Instagram from all over the world to share information and knowledge about the practice, and to share their experiences of life. Through sharing #embroidery on Instagram, women form deep connections and community with each other. This community works together to create a collective public voice and narrative about the issues facing our society. Embroidery offers a way to process and respond to current events and personal issues, acting as a form of personal and collective therapy. As I experienced, embroidery gave me a respite from my anxiety, allowing me to focus solely on my ability to create something with my hands. Sharing my creations on Instagram was affirming, connecting me with others, and giving me a sense of purpose, meaning, value, and worth. Through the connections I formed with others on Instagram I gained a deeper understanding of, and empathy towards, the issues facing our world. Engaging in the participatory collective of #embroidery offers women like myself the ability to engage with ideas and dialogue in a tangible way, through the act of creating permanent material artifacts. These artifacts are significant as unique personal and communal responses to a specific time in our history and socio-political context. Stitchers of Instagram continue to challenge the traditional tensions that surround women’s creative activities. By selling their work on sites such as Etsy as a collective, they blur the traditional boundaries of amateur vs. professional and craft vs. art. #embroidery is valuable not only because it represents an individual and collective contemporary (mostly young female) voice, but also because increasingly the artifacts produced out of this making are sought after, commissioned, paid for, and valued as art that people want to display in their homes. References Bishop, Sophie. “Managing Visibility on YouTube through Algorithmic Gossip.” New Media & Society 21 (2019): 2589-2606. Conner, Tamlin S., Colin G. De Young, and Paul J. Silvia. “Everyday Creative Activity as a Path to Flourishing.” The Journal of Positive Psychology 13.2 (2018): 181-189 Davidson, Jonathan. “Threading the Needle: When Embroidery Was Used to Treat Shell-Shock.” J R Army Med Corps 164.5 (2018): 390. Duffy, Brooke Erin, and Emily Hund. “‘Having It All’ on Social Media: Entrepreneurial Femininity and Self-Branding among Fashion Bloggers.” Social Media + Society (2015). Durham, Carolyn A. “The Subversive Stitch: Female Craft, Culture, and Ecriture.” Women’s Studies 17 (1990): 341-359. Ellis, Carolyn. The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004. Emery, Elizabeth. “Subversive Stitches: Needlework as Activism in Australian Feminist Art of the 1970s.” Everyday Revolutions: Remaking Gender, Sexuality and Culture in 1970s Australia. Eds. Michelle Arrow and Angela Woollacott. ANU P, 2019. 103-120. Gauntlett, David. Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. London: Polity, 2011. Greer, Betsy. Knitting for Good! The Guide to Creating Personal, Social, and Political Change, Stitch by Stitch. Boston: Trumpeter, 2008. Hackney, Fiona. “Quiet Activism and the New Amateur.” Design and Culture 5.2 (2015): 169-193. Hardy, Michele. “Feminism, Crafts & Knowledge.” Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft. Eds. M. Anna Fariello and Paula Owens. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2004. 176-183. Helland, Janice. “From Prison to Citizenship, 1910: The Making and Display of a Suffragist Banner.” Stitching the Self: Identity and Needle Arts. Eds. Johanna Amos and Lisa Binkley. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. 97-110. Hollman Jones, Stacy. “Autoethnography: Making the Personal Political.” Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. Hughes, Sherick A., and Julie L. Pennington. Autoethnography: Process, Product, and Possibility for Critical Social Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2017. Jefferies, Janice. “Crocheted Strategies: Women Crafting Their Own Communities.” TEXTILE 14.1 (2016): 14-35. Kennedy, Ümit. “Arriving on YouTube: Vlogs, Automedia and Autoethnography.” Life Writing (2021). ———. Becoming on YouTube: Exploring the Automedial Identities and Narratives of Australian Mummy Vlogging. PhD thesis. Western Sydney University, 2019. Leaver, Tama, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin. Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Polity, 2020. Luckman, Susan. “(En)gendering the Digital Body: Feminism and the Internet.” Hecate 25.2 (1999): 36-47. McRobbie, Angela. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture”. Feminist Media Studies 4.3 (2004): 255-264. Meikle, Graham, and Sherman Young. Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Minahan, Stella, and Julie Wolfram Cox. “STITCH’nBITCH: Cyberfeminism, a Third Place and the New Materiality.” Journal of Material Culture 12.1 (2007): 5-21. Moravec, Michelle. Motherhood Online. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. Morrison, Amy. “Autobiography in Real Time: A Genre Analysis of Personal Mommy Blogging.” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 4.2 (2010): 14. Parker, Rozsika. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s Press, 1984. Robertson, Kirsty. “Embroidery Pirates and Fashion Victims: Textiles, Craft and Copyright.” TEXTILE 8.1 (2015): 86-111. Robertson, Kirsty, and Lisa Vinebaum. “Crafting Community.” TEXTILE 14.1 (2016): 2-3. Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being.” Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-166. Sawden, Kari, and Saeedeh Niktab Etaati. “Constructing Grief: Processing Tragedy through the Ritualization of Embroidery.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice (2023): 1-10. Vyas, Dhaval. “Altruism and Wellbeing as Care Work in a Craft-Based Maker Culture.” PACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3 (2019): 239. Waterhouse, Jo. Indie Craft. London: Laurence King, 2010. Williams, Kristen A. “Old Time Mem’ry”: Contemporary Urban Craftivism and the Politics of Doing-It-Yourself in Postindustrial America.” Utopian Studies 22.2 (2011): 303-320. Wolk, Nurit, and Michal Bat Or. “The Therapeutic Aspects of Embroidery in Art Therapy from the Perspective of Adolescent Girls in a Post-Hospitalization Boarding School.” Children 10.1084 (2023): 1-24.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
16

Polain, Marcella Kathleen. "Writing with an Ear to the Ground: The Armenian Genocide's "Stubborn Murmur"." M/C Journal 16, no. 1 (March 19, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.591.

Full text
Abstract:
1909–22: Turkey exterminated over 1.5 million of its ethnically Armenian, and hundreds of thousands of its ethnically Greek and Assyrian, citizens. Most died in 1915. This period of decimation in now widely called the Armenian Genocide (Balakian 179-80).1910: Siamanto first published his poem, The Dance: “The corpses were piled as trees, / and from the springs, from the streams and the road, / the blood was a stubborn murmur.” When springs run red, when the dead are stacked tree-high, when “everything that could happen has already happened,” then time is nothing: “there is no future [and] the language of civilised humanity is not our language” (Nichanian 142).2007: In my novel The Edge of the World a ceramic bowl, luminous blue, recurs as motif. Imagine you are tiny: the bowl is broken but you don’t remember breaking it. You’re awash with tears. You sit on the floor, gather shards but, no matter how you try, you can’t fix it. Imagine, now, that the bowl is the sky, huge and upturned above your head. You have always known, through every wash of your blood, that life is shockingly precarious. Silence—between heartbeats, between the words your parents speak—tells you: something inside you is terribly wrong; home is not home but there is no other home; you “can never be fully grounded in a community which does not share or empathise with the experience of persecution” (Wajnryb 130). This is the stubborn murmur of your body.Because time is nothing, this essay is fragmented, non-linear. Its main characters: my mother, grandmother (Hovsanna), grandfather (Benyamin), some of my mother’s older siblings (Krikor, Maree, Hovsep, Arusiak), and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (Ottoman military officer, Young Turk leader, first president of Turkey). 1915–2013: Turkey invests much energy in genocide denial, minimisation and deflection of responsibility. 24 April 2012: Barack Obama refers to the Medz Yeghern (Great Calamity). The use of this term is decried as appeasement, privileging political alliance with Turkey over human rights. 2003: Between Genocide and Catastrophe, letters between Armenian-American theorist David Kazanjian and Armenian-French theorist Marc Nichanian, contest the naming of the “event” (126). Nichanian says those who call it the Genocide are:repeating every day, everywhere, in all places, the original denial of the Catastrophe. But this is part of the catastrophic structure of the survivor. By using the word “Genocide”, we survivors are only repeating […] the denial of the loss. We probably cannot help it. We are doing what the executioner wanted us to do […] we claim all over the world that we have been “genocided;” we relentlessly need to prove our own death. We are still in the claws of the executioner. We still belong to the logic of the executioner. (127)1992: In Revolution and Genocide, historian Robert Melson identifies the Armenian Genocide as “total” because it was public policy intended to exterminate a large fraction of Armenian society, “including the families of its members, and the destruction of its social and cultural identity in most or all aspects” (26).1986: Boyajian and Grigorian assert that the Genocide “is still operative” because, without full acknowledgement, “the ghosts won’t go away” (qtd. in Hovannisian 183). They rise up from earth, silence, water, dreams: Armenian literature, Armenian homes haunted by them. 2013: My heart pounds: Medz Yeghern, Aksor (Exile), Anashmaneli (Indefinable), Darakrutiun (Deportation), Chart (Massacre), Brnagaght (Forced migration), Aghed (Catastrophe), Genocide. I am awash. Time is nothing.1909–15: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was both a serving Ottoman officer and a leader of the revolutionary Young Turks. He led Ottoman troops in the repulsion of the Allied invasion before dawn on 25 April at Gallipoli and other sites. Many troops died in a series of battles that eventually saw the Ottomans triumph. Out of this was born one of Australia’s founding myths: Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs), courageous in the face of certain defeat. They are commemorated yearly on 25 April, ANZAC Day. To question this myth is to risk being labelled traitor.1919–23: Ataturk began a nationalist revolution against the occupying Allies, the nascent neighbouring Republic of Armenia, and others. The Allies withdrew two years later. Ataturk was installed as unofficial leader, becoming President in 1923. 1920–1922: The last waves of the Genocide. 2007: Robert Manne published A Turkish Tale: Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide, calling for a recontextualisation of the cultural view of the Gallipoli landings in light of the concurrence of the Armenian Genocide, which had taken place just over the rise, had been witnessed by many military personnel and widely reported by international media at the time. Armenian networks across Australia were abuzz. There were media discussions. I listened, stared out of my office window at the horizon, imagined Armenian communities in Sydney and Melbourne. Did they feel like me—like they were holding their breath?Then it all went quiet. Manne wrote: “It is a wonderful thing when, at the end of warfare, hatred dies. But I struggle to understand why Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide continue to exist for Australians in parallel moral universes.” 1992: I bought an old house to make a home for me and my two small children. The rooms were large, the ceilings high, and behind it was a jacaranda with a sturdy tree house built high up in its fork. One of my mother’s Armenian friends kindly offered to help with repairs. He and my mother would spend Saturdays with us, working, looking after the kids. Mum would stay the night; her friend would go home. But one night he took a sleeping bag up the ladder to the tree house, saying it reminded him of growing up in Lebanon. The following morning he was subdued; I suspect there were not as many mosquitoes in Lebanon as we had in our garden. But at dinner the previous night he had been in high spirits. The conversation had turned, as always, to politics. He and my mother had argued about Turkey and Russia, Britain’s role in the development of the Middle East conflict, the USA’s roughshod foreign policy and its effect on the world—and, of course, the Armenian Genocide, and the killingof Turkish governmental representatives by Armenians, in Australia and across the world, during the 1980s. He had intimated he knew the attackers and had materially supported them. But surely it was the beer talking. Later, when I asked my mother, she looked at me with round eyes and shrugged, uncharacteristically silent. 2002: Greek-American diva Diamanda Galas performed Dexifiones: Will and Testament at the Perth Concert Hall, her operatic work for “the forgotten victims of the Armenian and Anatolian Greek Genocide” (Galas).Her voice is so powerful it alters me.1925: My grandmother, Hovsanna, and my grandfather, Benyamin, had twice been separated in the Genocide (1915 and 1922) and twice reunited. But in early 1925, she had buried him, once a prosperous businessman, in a swamp. Armenians were not permitted burial in cemeteries. Once they had lived together in a big house with their dozen children; now there were only three with her. Maree, half-mad and 18 years old, and quiet Hovsep, aged seven,walked. Then five-year-old aunt, Arusiak—small, hungry, tired—had been carried by Hovsanna for months. They were walking from Cilicia to Jerusalem and its Armenian Quarter. Someone had said they had seen Krikor, her eldest son, there. Hovsanna was pregnant for the last time. Together the four reached Aleppo in Syria, found a Christian orphanage for girls, and Hovsanna, her pregnancy near its end, could carry Arusiak no further. She left her, promising to return. Hovsanna’s pains began in Beirut’s busy streets. She found privacy in the only place she could, under a house, crawled in. Whenever my mother spoke of her birth she described it like this: I was born under a stranger’s house like a dog.1975: My friend and I travelled to Albany by bus. After six hours we were looking down York Street, between Mount Clarence and Mount Melville, and beyond to Princess Royal Harbour, sapphire blue, and against which the town’s prosperous life—its shopfronts, hotels, cars, tourists, historic buildings—played out. It took away my breath: the deep harbour, whaling history, fishing boats. Rain and sun and scudding cloud; cliffs and swells; rocky points and the white curves of bays. It was from Albany that young Western Australian men, volunteers for World War I, embarked on ships for the Middle East, Gallipoli, sailing out of Princess Royal Harbour.1985: The Australian Government announced that Turkey had agreed to have the site of the 1915 Gallipoli landings renamed Anzac Cove. Commentators and politicians acknowledged it as historic praised Turkey for her generosity, expressed satisfaction that, 70 years on, former foes were able to embrace the shared human experience of war. We were justifiably proud of ourselves.2005: Turkey made her own requests. The entrance to Albany’s Princess Royal Harbour was renamed Ataturk Channel. A large bronze statue of Ataturk was erected on the headland overlooking the Harbour entrance. 24 April 1915: In the town of Hasan Beyli, in Cilicia, southwest Turkey, my great grandfather, a successful and respected businessman in his 50s, was asleep in his bed beside his wife. He had been born in that house, as had his father, grandfather, and all his children. His brother, my great uncle, had bought the house next door as a young man, brought his bride home to it, lived there ever since; between the two households there had been one child after another. All the cousins grew up together. My great grandfather and great uncle had gone to work that morning, despite their wives’ concerns, but had returned home early. The women had been relieved to see them. They made coffee, talked. Everyone had heard the rumours. Enemy ships were massing off the coast. 1978: The second time in Albany was my honeymoon. We had driven into the Goldfields then headed south. Such distance, such beautiful strangeness: red earth, red rocks; scant forests of low trees, thin arms outstretched; the dry, pale, flat land of Norseman. Shimmering heat. Then the big, wild coast.On our second morning—a cool, overcast day—we took our handline to a jetty. The ocean was mercury; a line of cormorants settled and bobbed. Suddenly fish bit; we reeled them in. I leaned over the jetty’s side, looked down into the deep. The water was clear and undisturbed save the twirling of a pike that looked like it had reversed gravity and was shooting straight up to me. Its scales flashed silver as itbroke the surface.1982: How could I concentrate on splicing a film with this story in my head? Besides the desk, the only other furniture in the editing suite was a whiteboard. I took a marker and divided the board into three columns for the three generations: my grandparents, Hovsanna and Benyamin; my mother; someone like me. There was a lot in the first column, some in the second, nothing in the third. I stared at the blankness of my then-young life.A teacher came in to check my editing. I tried to explain what I had been doing. “I think,” he said, stony-faced, “that should be your third film, not your first.”When he had gone I stared at the reels of film, the white board blankness, the wall. It took 25 years to find the form, the words to say it: a novel not a film, prose not pictures.2007: Ten minutes before the launch of The Edge of the World, the venue was empty. I made myself busy, told myself: what do you expect? Your research has shown, over and over, this is a story about which few know or very much care, an inconvenient, unfashionable story; it is perfectly in keeping that no-one will come. When I stepped onto the rostrum to speak, there were so many people that they crowded the doorway, spilled onto the pavement. “I want to thank my mother,” I said, “who, pretending to do her homework, listened instead to the story her mother told other Armenian survivor-women, kept that story for 50 years, and then passed it on to me.” 2013: There is a section of The Edge of the World I needed to find because it had really happened and, when it happened, I knew, there in my living room, that Boyajian and Grigorian (183) were right about the Armenian Genocide being “still operative.” But I knew even more than that: I knew that the Diaspora triggered by genocide is both rescue and weapon, the new life in this host nation both sanctuary and betrayal. I picked up a copy, paced, flicked, followed my nose, found it:On 25 April, the day after Genocide memorial-day, I am watching television. The Prime Minister stands at the ANZAC memorial in western Turkey and delivers a poetic and moving speech. My eyes fill with tears, and I moan a little and cover them. In his speech he talks about the heroism of the Turkish soldiers in their defence of their homeland, about the extent of their losses – sixty thousand men. I glance at my son. He raises his eyebrows at me. I lose count of how many times Kemal Ataturk is mentioned as the Father of Modern Turkey. I think of my grandmother and grandfather, and all my baby aunts and uncles […] I curl over like a mollusc; the ache in my chest draws me in. I feel small and very tired; I feel like I need to wash.Is it true that if we repeat something often enough and loud enough it becomes the truth? The Prime Minister quotes Kemal Ataturk: the ANZACS who died and are buried on that western coast are deemed ‘sons of Turkey’. My son turns my grandfather’s, my mother’s, my eyes to me and says, It is amazing they can be so friendly after we attacked them.I draw up my knees to my chest, lay my head and arms down. My limbs feel weak and useless. My throat hurts. I look at my Australian son with his Armenian face (325-6).24 April 1915 cont: There had been trouble all my great grandfather’s life: pogrom here, massacre there. But this land was accustomed to colonisers: the Mongols, the Persians, latterly the Ottomans. They invade, conquer, rise, fall; Armenians stay. This had been Armenian homeland for thousands of years.No-one masses ships off a coast unless planning an invasion. So be it. These Europeans could not be worse than the Ottomans. That night, were my great grandfather and great uncle awoken by the pounding at each door, or by the horses and gendarmes’ boots? They were seized, each family herded at gunpoint into its garden, and made to watch. Hanging is slow. There could be no mistakes. The gendarmes used the stoutest branches, stayed until they were sure the men weredead. This happened to hundreds of prominent Armenian men all over Turkey that night.Before dawn, the Allies made landfall.Each year those lost in the Genocide are remembered on 24 April, the day before ANZAC Day.1969: I asked my mother if she had any brothers and sisters. She froze, her hands in the sink. I stared at her, then slipped from the room.1915: The Ottoman government decreed: all Armenians were to surrender their documents and report to authorities. Able-bodied men were taken away, my grandfather among them. Women and children, the elderly and disabled, were told to prepare to walk to a safe camp where they would stay for the duration of the war. They would be accompanied by armed soldiers for their protection. They were permitted to take with them what they could carry (Bryce 1916).It began immediately, pretty young women and children first. There are so many ways to kill. Months later, a few dazed, starved survivors stumbled into the Syrian desert, were driven into lakes, or herded into churches and set alight.Most husbands and fathers were never seen again. 2003: I arrived early at my son’s school, parked in the shade, opened The Silence: How Tragedy Shapes Talk, and began to read. Soon I was annotating furiously. Ruth Wajnryb writes of “growing up among innocent peers in an innocent landscape” and also that the notion of “freedom of speech” in Australia “seems often, to derive from that innocent landscape where reside people who have no personal scars or who have little relevant historical knowledge” (141).1984: I travelled to Vancouver, Canada, and knocked on Arusiak’s door. Afraid she would not agree to meet me, I hadn’t told her I was coming. She was welcoming and gracious. This was my first experience of extended family and I felt loved in a new and important way, a way I had read about, had observed in my friends, had longed for. One afternoon she said, “You know our mother left me in an orphanage…When I saw her again, it was too late. I didn’t know who they were, what a family was. I felt nothing.” “Yes, I know,” I replied, my heart full and hurting. The next morning, over breakfast, she quietly asked me to leave. 1926: When my mother was a baby, her 18 year-old sister, Maree, tried to drown her in the sea. My mother clearly recalled Maree’s face had been disfigured by a sword. Hovsanna, would ask my mother to forgive Maree’s constant abuse and bad behaviour, saying, “She is only half a person.”1930: Someone gave Hovsanna the money to travel to Aleppo and reclaim Arusiak, by then 10 years old. My mother was intrigued by the appearance of this sister but Arusiak was watchful and withdrawn. When she finally did speak to my then five-year-old mother, she hissed: “Why did she leave me behind and keep you?”Soon after Arusiak appeared, Maree, “only half a person,” disappeared. My mother was happy about that.1935: At 15, Arusiak found a live-in job and left. My mother was 10 years old; her brother Hovsep, who cared for her before and after school every day while their mother worked, and always had, was seventeen. She adored him. He had just finished high school and was going to study medicine. One day he fell ill. He died within a week.1980: My mother told me she never saw her mother laugh or, once Hovsep died, in anything other than black. Two or three times before Hovsep died, she saw her smile a little, and twice she heard her singing when she thought she was alone: “A very sad song,” my mother would say, “that made me cry.”1942: At seventeen, my mother had been working as a live-in nanny for three years. Every week on her only half-day off she had caught the bus home. But now Hovsanna was in hospital, so my mother had been visiting her there. One day her employer told her she must go to the hospital immediately. She ran. Hovsanna was lying alone and very still. Something wasn’t right. My mother searched the hospital corridors but found no-one. She picked up a phone. When someone answered she told them to send help. Then she ran all the way home, grabbed Arusiak’s photograph and ran all the way back. She laid it on her mother’s chest, said, “It’s all right, Mama, Arusiak’s here.”1976: My mother said she didn’t like my boyfriend; I was not to go out with him. She said she never disobeyed her own mother because she really loved her mother. I went out with my boyfriend. When I came home, my belongings were on the front porch. The door was bolted. I was seventeen.2003: I read Wajnryb who identifies violent eruptions of anger and frozen silences as some of the behaviours consistent in families with a genocidal history (126). 1970: My father had been dead over a year. My brothers and I were, all under 12, made too much noise. My mother picked up the phone: she can’t stand us, she screamed; she will call an orphanage to take us away. We begged.I fled to my room. I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t keep still. I paced, pressed my face into a corner; shook and cried, knowing (because she had always told us so) that she didn’t make idle threats, knowing that this was what I had sometimes glimpsed on her face when she looked at us.2012: The Internet reveals images of Ataturk’s bronze statue overlooking Princess Royal Harbour. Of course, it’s outsized, imposing. The inscription on its plinth reads: "Peace at Home/ Peace in the World." He wears a suit, looks like a scholar, is moving towards us, a scroll in his hand. The look in his eyes is all intensity. Something distant has arrested him – a receding or re-emerging vision. Perhaps a murmur that builds, subsides, builds again. (Medz Yeghern, Aksor, Aghed, Genocide). And what is written on that scroll?2013: My partner suggested we go to Albany, escape Perth’s brutal summer. I tried to explain why it’s impossible. There is no memorial in Albany, or anywhere else in Western Australia, to the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian Genocide. ReferencesAkcam, Taner. “The Politics of Genocide.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 11 Dec. 2011. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watchv=OxAJaaw81eU&noredirect=1genocide›.Balakian, Peter. The Burning Tigress: The Armenian Genocide. London: William Heinemann, 2004.BBC. “Kemal Ataturk (1881–1938).” BBC History. 2013. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ataturk_kemal.shtml›.Boyajian, Levon, and Haigaz Grigorian. “Psychological Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide.”The Armenian Genocide in Perspective. Ed. Richard Hovannisian. New Brunswick: Transaction, 1987. 177–85.Bryce, Viscount. The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1916.Galas, Diamanda. Program Notes. Dexifiones: Will and Testament. Perth Concert Hall, Perth, Australia. 2001.———.“Dexifiones: Will and Testament FULL Live Lisboa 2001 Part 1.” Online Video Clip. YouTube, 5 Nov. 2011. Web. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvVnYbxWArM›.Kazanjian, David, and Marc Nichanian. “Between Genocide and Catastrophe.” Loss. Eds. David Eng and David Kazanjian. Los Angeles: U of California P, 2003. 125–47.Manne, Robert. “A Turkish Tale: Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide.” The Monthly Feb. 2007. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.themonthly.com.au/turkish-tale-gallipoli-and-armenian-genocide-robert-manne-459›.Matiossian, Vartan. “When Dictionaries Are Left Unopened: How ‘Medz Yeghern’ Turned into a Terminology of Denial.” The Armenian Weekly 27 Nov. 2012. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/11/27/when-dictionaries-are-left-unopened-how-medz-yeghern-turned-into-terminology-of-denial/›.Melson, Robert. Revolution and Genocide. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Nicholson, Brendan. “ASIO Detected Bomb Plot by Armenian Terrorists.” The Australian 2 Jan. 2012. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cabinet-papers/asio-detected-bomb-plot-by-armenian-terrorists/story-fnbkqb54-1226234411154›.“President Obama Issues Statement on Armenian Remembrance Day.” The Armenian Weekly 24 Apr. 2012. 5 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.armenianweekly.com/2012/04/24/president-obama-issues-statement-on-armenian-remembrance-day/›.Polain, Marcella. The Edge of the World. Fremantle: Fremantle Press, 2007.Siamanto. “The Dance.” Trans. Peter Balakian and Nervart Yaghlian. Adonias Dalgas Memorial Page 5 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.terezakis.com/dalgas.html›.Stockings, Craig. “Let’s Have a Truce in the Battle of the Anzac Myth.” The Australian 25 Apr. 2012. 6 Mar. 2013 ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/lets-have-a-truce-in-the-battle-of-the-anzac-myth/story-e6frgd0x-1226337486382›.Wajnryb, Ruth. The Silence: How Tragedy Shapes Talk. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2001.
APA, Harvard, Vancouver, ISO, and other styles
We offer discounts on all premium plans for authors whose works are included in thematic literature selections. Contact us to get a unique promo code!

To the bibliography