Join us online or in person for a seminar with Joan Beaumont.

Pilgrimages and postmemory

Pilgrimages to war cemeteries have long been part of the rituals of Australian remembrance. It is easy to understand why veterans and the parents and siblings of the men who died in war make these journeys. But why do younger generations do so today, more than a century after World War I and eight decades after World War II? Joan Beaumont has never lost a family member in war. But she joined a pilgrimage to Ambon by the Gull Force 2/21st Battalion Association on Anzac Day 2024 to understand why children and grandchildren continue to make the journey to this site of tragedy in World War II.  Is it ‘post-memory’, to use the phrase coined by American scholar Marianne Hirsch to describe the relationship that the ‘generation after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before? Or has the pilgrimage become a site of memory in its own right anchored in, but now distant from. the memories of war?  What will be the future of such pilgrimages as this current generation ages and dies?

11am, 25th September 2024.

Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC2.108
Zoom: Click here

Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita at the ANU and a valued member of the Centre for Contemporary Histories. Joan is an internationally recognized historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war.