‘We thought she was a witch’: Gender, class and whiteness in the familial ‘memory archive’

Hemmings, Clare

doi:10.1177/17506980211066578

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 18 publications

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“…Guiding our self-study, we engaged in a kind of feminist remembrance. This is inspired in part by feminist memory work—that is, a “highly open” (Haug, 2008, p. 537) research developed by Haug (1992, 2008; Haug et al, 1987) and others since the 80s, focused on feminine socialization and “working on narrative and memory to intervene in and denaturalize dominant history from a sociological perspective” (Hemmings, 2022, p. 2). According to Haug (2008),In working with our memories, we are trying to do two things: to find out how we actively conform with existing power relationships; and also, where in the past there are “sparks of hope” in which we recognise ourselves “as the ones who are meant.” (p. 538)…”

Section: Methodology and Method: Self-study And Feminist Memory Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freighted Friendships to Phony Flowers: Feminist Memory Work and Self-Study in a Study Abroad Program

Hare

Moore

2023

Journal of Experiential Education

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Background: This paper analyzes a remembered shared experience of cocurricular designing and coteaching an experiential learning pilot project in a university study abroad program (SAP) that emphasized social justice. Purpose: We look back because the pilot program is a significant demonstration of what complexities can arise when feminist educators bring their own politics and pedagogies to experiential learning and study abroad education contexts; we understand this as valuable because “experience” broadly is complex. Memory is crucial to feminist educators because it indicates the development of care, ethics, pedagogy, politics, and priorities, and so, we ask: what pedagogical insights can be gained through revisiting our enmeshed personal/professional memories of cocurricular designing and coteaching an experiential learning series for study abroad students? Methodology: We use self-study and memory work to analyze memory objects (curriculum materials) and narratives (of teaching) to explore this pedagogical work and highlight generative tensions that emerged while employing a critical feminist approach to work not initially conceptualized with this framing. Findings: We uncovered three key tensions: personal, community, and racial that troubled emergent issues related to difference, discourse, and positionality. Implications: This project offers pedagogical insights into how oppression and inequality may enter experiential learning and study abroad spaces.

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Section: Methodology and Method: Self-study And Feminist Memory Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Freighted Friendships to Phony Flowers: Feminist Memory Work and Self-Study in a Study Abroad Program

Hare

Moore

2023

Journal of Experiential Education

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The Typography of Forgetting: The Unsettling of Dominant Social Narratives in the Resurfacing of a Military Deserter in Family Memory

Milne

2024

Genealogy

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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.

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‘We thought she was a witch’: Gender, class and whiteness in the familial ‘memory archive’

Cited by 2 publications

References 18 publications

Freighted Friendships to Phony Flowers: Feminist Memory Work and Self-Study in a Study Abroad Program

Freighted Friendships to Phony Flowers: Feminist Memory Work and Self-Study in a Study Abroad Program

The Typography of Forgetting: The Unsettling of Dominant Social Narratives in the Resurfacing of a Military Deserter in Family Memory

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