Pub Date : 2024-06-03DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020071
SunAh M. Laybourn
Drawing on Asian adoptee-authored research, this article conceptualizes a critical adoptee standpoint. It underscores the significance of adoptees as knowledge producers and offers new insights into family dynamics, racialization processes, and adoptee personhood. Through three conceptual themes derived from adoptee-authored research, it illuminates the intersectional power dynamics shaping adoptees’ lived experiences and challenges traditional adoption narratives. This approach repositions adoptees as agentic subjects who have cultivated a group consciousness that transcends traditional boundaries of belonging. While focused on Asian adoptees, the essay ultimately calls for broader recognition of adoptees’ contributions to adoption discourse and a more comprehensive understanding of a critical adoptee standpoint in both academic and advocacy settings and among the broader adoptee population.
{"title":"Critical Adoptee Standpoint: Transnational, Transracial Adoptees as Knowledge Producers","authors":"SunAh M. Laybourn","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020071","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020071","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing on Asian adoptee-authored research, this article conceptualizes a critical adoptee standpoint. It underscores the significance of adoptees as knowledge producers and offers new insights into family dynamics, racialization processes, and adoptee personhood. Through three conceptual themes derived from adoptee-authored research, it illuminates the intersectional power dynamics shaping adoptees’ lived experiences and challenges traditional adoption narratives. This approach repositions adoptees as agentic subjects who have cultivated a group consciousness that transcends traditional boundaries of belonging. While focused on Asian adoptees, the essay ultimately calls for broader recognition of adoptees’ contributions to adoption discourse and a more comprehensive understanding of a critical adoptee standpoint in both academic and advocacy settings and among the broader adoptee population.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141269658","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-17DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020062
Chris Kempshall, Catriona Pennell, Felicity Tattersall
Community partnerships, based on ‘the collaborative turn’ in academic research, are an increasingly common framework through which ‘bottom-up’ histories, particularly of diverse and/or more marginalised communities, are being told. This article is about the ‘doing’ of this type of work. It focuses on the question: what lessons can be made visible when attempted cooperation fails to deliver the outcomes initially hoped for? Firstly, this article outlines the events and activities undertaken by the authors in exploring the ways that ephemera and other objects can be used to understand and transmit the historical experiences of communities often on the periphery of mainstream war commemoration. It will discuss the ways in which connections with these communities were built, with the aim of undertaking several creative writing workshops, leading to a co-produced publication of the participants’ material. Secondly, as part of a broader acknowledgment of the possibility of failure and its benefits, it will explore why some of these creative workshop efforts failed to meet expectations and outline a series of recommendations for other historians and community-orientated projects to consider for future activities.
{"title":"Waiting to Be Discovered? Community Partnerships, the Facilitation of Diverse Memory, and Reflections on Academic Success and Failure","authors":"Chris Kempshall, Catriona Pennell, Felicity Tattersall","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020062","url":null,"abstract":"Community partnerships, based on ‘the collaborative turn’ in academic research, are an increasingly common framework through which ‘bottom-up’ histories, particularly of diverse and/or more marginalised communities, are being told. This article is about the ‘doing’ of this type of work. It focuses on the question: what lessons can be made visible when attempted cooperation fails to deliver the outcomes initially hoped for? Firstly, this article outlines the events and activities undertaken by the authors in exploring the ways that ephemera and other objects can be used to understand and transmit the historical experiences of communities often on the periphery of mainstream war commemoration. It will discuss the ways in which connections with these communities were built, with the aim of undertaking several creative writing workshops, leading to a co-produced publication of the participants’ material. Secondly, as part of a broader acknowledgment of the possibility of failure and its benefits, it will explore why some of these creative workshop efforts failed to meet expectations and outline a series of recommendations for other historians and community-orientated projects to consider for future activities.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140966140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-16DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020061
Rachel Caines
Over recent decades, historians, communities, and museum professionals have worked to share and understand stories of Indigenous Australian military service. This article posits that ephemera from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection offer a tangible way to engage with personal stories and enrich the narrative(s) of Indigenous service in the Second World War. While many experiences were shared by the thousands of men and women who enlisted and served during the war, surviving ephemera and the related personal stories reveal the cultural, linguistic, and experiential diversity of the individuals who served. Using five case studies from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection, this article explores the link between ephemera and stories of service and suggests that sharing these links with a wider audience can serve to broaden understandings of Indigenous service and sacrifice.
{"title":"Working Backwards, Moving Forwards: Ephemera and Diversity in Australian Stories of Indigenous Second World War Service","authors":"Rachel Caines","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020061","url":null,"abstract":"Over recent decades, historians, communities, and museum professionals have worked to share and understand stories of Indigenous Australian military service. This article posits that ephemera from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection offer a tangible way to engage with personal stories and enrich the narrative(s) of Indigenous service in the Second World War. While many experiences were shared by the thousands of men and women who enlisted and served during the war, surviving ephemera and the related personal stories reveal the cultural, linguistic, and experiential diversity of the individuals who served. Using five case studies from the Australian War Memorial’s National Collection, this article explores the link between ephemera and stories of service and suggests that sharing these links with a wider audience can serve to broaden understandings of Indigenous service and sacrifice.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140968411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-14DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020060
Andrew Milne
Society expects history to be objective and factual. Collectively history is the memory of the nation, that group, the imagined community that believes that it has always been together. It could even be said that the nation is about forgetting; forgetting that the people who make up that community were not always together as they are now, or the forgetting of those hurdles and hindrances that create obstacles to cohesion and continuity. Memory is collaborative by nature, and provides a legacy to society, a response to its own mortality in the future. This paper proposes to examine the case of subjective recounting of the past through a family memory of war, the forgetting, the gaps created in narratives to enable cohesion and to fit in with publicly acceptable discourse. It ultimately attempts to answer the question as to why it might be important to re-examine such stories of an individual nature, in a wider scope of the nation, and links those seemingly antinomic periods of time of past, present, and future, which are not as exclusive as might be believed. This paper focuses upon a deserter ancestor, going against the grain of traditional narratives. Traditionally, soldiers are considered by definition of what is expected from them in the national narrative, as ‘war heroes’. However, this paper examines the life of a military ancestor who, in reality, did not fit into that framework, and who deserted from the army (although never on the front line, thus avoiding being shot). Nevertheless, the multiple desertions (deserted five times in total, lost kit twice, was imprisoned, and was detained for desertion three times) only ‘resurfaced’ recently due to the availability of documentation and research carried out in archives. While the ancestor conformed socially to what was expected of him, the reality of his military files seems to reveal the contrary. Despite the high numbers of times that he did desert, he did also rejoin every time, and ended up spending 3 decades in the same military unit. Or, perhaps the manner in which society views soldiers pre- and post-WWI has been altered, and, as such, desertion was not once what it has become. Forgetting has been the norm in society regarding certain pasts that step outside of the national narrative, rather than remembering. This paper attempts to imagine the nation’s past in a different way, by including those who also deserted, an area of ill-defined research in military history.
{"title":"The Typography of Forgetting: The Unsettling of Dominant Social Narratives in the Resurfacing of a Military Deserter in Family Memory","authors":"Andrew Milne","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020060","url":null,"abstract":"Society expects history to be objective and factual. Collectively history is the memory of the nation, that group, the imagined community that believes that it has always been together. It could even be said that the nation is about forgetting; forgetting that the people who make up that community were not always together as they are now, or the forgetting of those hurdles and hindrances that create obstacles to cohesion and continuity. Memory is collaborative by nature, and provides a legacy to society, a response to its own mortality in the future. This paper proposes to examine the case of subjective recounting of the past through a family memory of war, the forgetting, the gaps created in narratives to enable cohesion and to fit in with publicly acceptable discourse. It ultimately attempts to answer the question as to why it might be important to re-examine such stories of an individual nature, in a wider scope of the nation, and links those seemingly antinomic periods of time of past, present, and future, which are not as exclusive as might be believed. This paper focuses upon a deserter ancestor, going against the grain of traditional narratives. Traditionally, soldiers are considered by definition of what is expected from them in the national narrative, as ‘war heroes’. However, this paper examines the life of a military ancestor who, in reality, did not fit into that framework, and who deserted from the army (although never on the front line, thus avoiding being shot). Nevertheless, the multiple desertions (deserted five times in total, lost kit twice, was imprisoned, and was detained for desertion three times) only ‘resurfaced’ recently due to the availability of documentation and research carried out in archives. While the ancestor conformed socially to what was expected of him, the reality of his military files seems to reveal the contrary. Despite the high numbers of times that he did desert, he did also rejoin every time, and ended up spending 3 decades in the same military unit. Or, perhaps the manner in which society views soldiers pre- and post-WWI has been altered, and, as such, desertion was not once what it has become. Forgetting has been the norm in society regarding certain pasts that step outside of the national narrative, rather than remembering. This paper attempts to imagine the nation’s past in a different way, by including those who also deserted, an area of ill-defined research in military history.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140981452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-13DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020059
Line Reichelt Føreland, Rauni Äärelä-Vihriälä
This article explores the integration of digital games, specifically Minecraft, within Sámi educational contexts. The qualitative case study was based on a development project in Sámi teacher education, exploring key aspects highlighted by pre-service teachers when using Minecraft during their practice periods with primary school children. Given the significant role teachers play in instructional organisation, this article aims to identify specific areas where pre-service teachers may benefit from additional support and training to enhance their preparedness for the classroom. Incorporating Sámi educational frameworks and digital competencies into Sámi teacher education, we utilised the digital competence of future teachers (DCFT) model to guide data collection and analysis. This involved distributing anonymous online questionnaires to pre-service teachers (n = 17). Our findings indicate the transformative potential of digital games in Sámi education, particularly in the use of Sámi as a gaming language and Sámi cultural game content. The article emphasises the relevance of digital technologies in preserving and revitalising Indigenous languages and cultures to better understand how to leverage these tools effectively in culturally relevant ways. By utilising contemporary digital tools within an Indigenous education, educators can enhance cultural continuity and empower Indigenous communities in the digital age.
{"title":"Exploring the Use of Minecraft in Sámi Teacher Education","authors":"Line Reichelt Føreland, Rauni Äärelä-Vihriälä","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020059","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the integration of digital games, specifically Minecraft, within Sámi educational contexts. The qualitative case study was based on a development project in Sámi teacher education, exploring key aspects highlighted by pre-service teachers when using Minecraft during their practice periods with primary school children. Given the significant role teachers play in instructional organisation, this article aims to identify specific areas where pre-service teachers may benefit from additional support and training to enhance their preparedness for the classroom. Incorporating Sámi educational frameworks and digital competencies into Sámi teacher education, we utilised the digital competence of future teachers (DCFT) model to guide data collection and analysis. This involved distributing anonymous online questionnaires to pre-service teachers (n = 17). Our findings indicate the transformative potential of digital games in Sámi education, particularly in the use of Sámi as a gaming language and Sámi cultural game content. The article emphasises the relevance of digital technologies in preserving and revitalising Indigenous languages and cultures to better understand how to leverage these tools effectively in culturally relevant ways. By utilising contemporary digital tools within an Indigenous education, educators can enhance cultural continuity and empower Indigenous communities in the digital age.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140983900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-11DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020058
Vittorio Iervese
The Capitol Hill riots on 6 January 2021 were an event of great importance not only because of their political and legal impact, but also because they allowed everyone to observe the symbols, images, masks, and other signs that were displayed in front of the cameras of many journalists and eyewitnesses. The iconography displayed on that occasion should not be dealt with as an extemporary invention but considered the result of a process of semantic and narrative accumulation produced in online and offline interactions. This article seeks to outline a theoretical–methodological framework of contemporary conspiracy images as multimodal forms of communication. Starting with images collected on Capitol Hill along with a corpus of online conversations that occurred on platforms such as Gab, in particular, between 2016 and 2021, examples of the dynamics of constitution of conspiracy images and their genealogy will be provided.
{"title":"Multimodal Genealogy: The Capitol Hill Riot and Conspiracy Iconography","authors":"Vittorio Iervese","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020058","url":null,"abstract":"The Capitol Hill riots on 6 January 2021 were an event of great importance not only because of their political and legal impact, but also because they allowed everyone to observe the symbols, images, masks, and other signs that were displayed in front of the cameras of many journalists and eyewitnesses. The iconography displayed on that occasion should not be dealt with as an extemporary invention but considered the result of a process of semantic and narrative accumulation produced in online and offline interactions. This article seeks to outline a theoretical–methodological framework of contemporary conspiracy images as multimodal forms of communication. Starting with images collected on Capitol Hill along with a corpus of online conversations that occurred on platforms such as Gab, in particular, between 2016 and 2021, examples of the dynamics of constitution of conspiracy images and their genealogy will be provided.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140987918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-10DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020055
Julia Ribeiro S. C. Thomaz
The First World War blurred the lines between “ordinary” and “literary” writing practices. Many sources corroborate this: necrologies written about poets who died in the act of writing not a poem but rather a letter, or introductions to poetry collections where bereaved families and friends admit they had no knowledge of their loved one’s writing practices until they found a journal full of poems after the author’s death, which they only published as a posthumous tribute. This article uses examples of French poetry of the Great War to explore this permeability between what is considered war poetry and what is considered war ephemera. The main question it addresses is what changes when we look at the war poems that were initially ephemera or ordinary writing. Whose stories get told when poetry is studied not as literature to be judged as accomplished or failed art but as a way of writing to make sense of the world? It argues that when we choose to read poems as ephemera and from the point of view of a larger anthropology of writing practices, diverse histories emerge and communities who write poetry not only as an artistic pursuit but also as a means of organizing experience and leaving traces behind reclaim ownership over their own narratives. This can challenge the false equivalence between the cultural history of warfare and an intellectual history of the elites at war and includes poetry within paradigmatic shifts that place objects at the centre of mediations of the experience of war.
{"title":"The Case for Reading War Poetry as Ephemera","authors":"Julia Ribeiro S. C. Thomaz","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020055","url":null,"abstract":"The First World War blurred the lines between “ordinary” and “literary” writing practices. Many sources corroborate this: necrologies written about poets who died in the act of writing not a poem but rather a letter, or introductions to poetry collections where bereaved families and friends admit they had no knowledge of their loved one’s writing practices until they found a journal full of poems after the author’s death, which they only published as a posthumous tribute. This article uses examples of French poetry of the Great War to explore this permeability between what is considered war poetry and what is considered war ephemera. The main question it addresses is what changes when we look at the war poems that were initially ephemera or ordinary writing. Whose stories get told when poetry is studied not as literature to be judged as accomplished or failed art but as a way of writing to make sense of the world? It argues that when we choose to read poems as ephemera and from the point of view of a larger anthropology of writing practices, diverse histories emerge and communities who write poetry not only as an artistic pursuit but also as a means of organizing experience and leaving traces behind reclaim ownership over their own narratives. This can challenge the false equivalence between the cultural history of warfare and an intellectual history of the elites at war and includes poetry within paradigmatic shifts that place objects at the centre of mediations of the experience of war.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140990768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-10DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020056
Weiguo Zhang
I employ autoethnography to undertake a broader scholarly inquiry on intergenerational relationships and transnational care shaped by global migration and aging. Specifically, I reflect on the dynamics of my relationship with my mother, beginning with my departure from my home and spanning a period of 40 years, 8 in China and 34 outside China. In doing so, I contemplate theoretical models of intergenerational solidarity, ambivalence, and role ambiguity. I also challenge cultural assumptions of filial piety. The geographical distance, passage of time, and acculturation process have profoundly influenced my perception of filial piety, which differs markedly from my mother’s. However, this divergence in consensual solidarity—marked by variations in attitudes, beliefs, and values—does not translate into weakened affectual solidarity, characterized by positive sentiments and emotions. Furthermore, aided by advancements in transportation and social media technology, I have been able to extend crucial emotional and some “instrumental” care to my mother, along with financial support if needed, despite limited hands-on care. Nevertheless, I must negotiate my care for my mother and navigate a delicate balance in coordinating my care efforts with those of my non-migrant siblings.
{"title":"An Autoethnography on Intergenerational Relationships and Transnational Care for Older Parents","authors":"Weiguo Zhang","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020056","url":null,"abstract":"I employ autoethnography to undertake a broader scholarly inquiry on intergenerational relationships and transnational care shaped by global migration and aging. Specifically, I reflect on the dynamics of my relationship with my mother, beginning with my departure from my home and spanning a period of 40 years, 8 in China and 34 outside China. In doing so, I contemplate theoretical models of intergenerational solidarity, ambivalence, and role ambiguity. I also challenge cultural assumptions of filial piety. The geographical distance, passage of time, and acculturation process have profoundly influenced my perception of filial piety, which differs markedly from my mother’s. However, this divergence in consensual solidarity—marked by variations in attitudes, beliefs, and values—does not translate into weakened affectual solidarity, characterized by positive sentiments and emotions. Furthermore, aided by advancements in transportation and social media technology, I have been able to extend crucial emotional and some “instrumental” care to my mother, along with financial support if needed, despite limited hands-on care. Nevertheless, I must negotiate my care for my mother and navigate a delicate balance in coordinating my care efforts with those of my non-migrant siblings.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140991701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-10DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020054
Sarafina Pagnotta
Though often under-represented in the official and national narratives and in Canadian military historiography more broadly, the intimate and personal lived experiences of Canadian prisoners of war (POW) during the Second World War can be found in archives, photography collections, and collections of war art. In an attempt to see past the mythologised versions of POWs that appear in Hollywood films, best-selling monographs, and other forms of popular culture, it is through bits of ephemera—including wartime log books and the drawings carefully kept and sent home to loved ones along with handwritten letters—that the stories of non-combatant men and women who spent their war as POWs, can be told. Together, Canadian POWs created and curated community and fostered unconventional family ties, sometimes called “emotional communities”, through the collection and accumulation of drawings, illustrations, paintings, and other examples of war art on the pages of their wartime log books while living behind barbed wire. This article uncovers some of these stories, buried in the thousands of boxes in the George Metcalf Archival Collection—the textual archives—at the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
{"title":"Curating Community behind Barbed Wire: Canadian Prisoner of War Art from the Second World War","authors":"Sarafina Pagnotta","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020054","url":null,"abstract":"Though often under-represented in the official and national narratives and in Canadian military historiography more broadly, the intimate and personal lived experiences of Canadian prisoners of war (POW) during the Second World War can be found in archives, photography collections, and collections of war art. In an attempt to see past the mythologised versions of POWs that appear in Hollywood films, best-selling monographs, and other forms of popular culture, it is through bits of ephemera—including wartime log books and the drawings carefully kept and sent home to loved ones along with handwritten letters—that the stories of non-combatant men and women who spent their war as POWs, can be told. Together, Canadian POWs created and curated community and fostered unconventional family ties, sometimes called “emotional communities”, through the collection and accumulation of drawings, illustrations, paintings, and other examples of war art on the pages of their wartime log books while living behind barbed wire. This article uncovers some of these stories, buried in the thousands of boxes in the George Metcalf Archival Collection—the textual archives—at the Canadian War Museum (CWM) in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140992960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-10DOI: 10.3390/genealogy8020053
Yael S. Hacohen
During the Holocaust, poets went to extraordinary lengths to write their poems and transmit them. Poems that were written during those years were often buried in the ground, stitched into clothing, smuggled out of prisons, or graffitied onto walls. These object documents carried more than facts about these events; they carried the feeling of living through these events. This research explores the last poems of four Holocaust poets, Władysław Szlengel, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Hannah Szenes, and Abramek Koplowicz, investigating not only the poems but their object-ness and their stories of transference. These poems, like urgent postcards, deliver messages to a family, to a community, to the world. They ask―what does it mean to write a poem as a last will and testament?
{"title":"“This Is How/You’ll End”: Holocaust Poems as War Ephemera","authors":"Yael S. Hacohen","doi":"10.3390/genealogy8020053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy8020053","url":null,"abstract":"During the Holocaust, poets went to extraordinary lengths to write their poems and transmit them. Poems that were written during those years were often buried in the ground, stitched into clothing, smuggled out of prisons, or graffitied onto walls. These object documents carried more than facts about these events; they carried the feeling of living through these events. This research explores the last poems of four Holocaust poets, Władysław Szlengel, Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger, Hannah Szenes, and Abramek Koplowicz, investigating not only the poems but their object-ness and their stories of transference. These poems, like urgent postcards, deliver messages to a family, to a community, to the world. They ask―what does it mean to write a poem as a last will and testament?","PeriodicalId":504890,"journal":{"name":"Genealogy","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140993240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}