Christina Twomey - School of Historical Studies Staff

Personal History

Christina Twomey received her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and held positions at Deakin University and the University of Adelaide before her appointment to Monash University in 2003. Her research has been centrally concerned with the impact of major dislocations and traumatic events in Australian history, at both the individual level and in terms of the broader cultural response to them. She is interested in those moments of crisis for what they reveal about understandings of gender, race and class and how they enter the field of representation.

In 2004, Christina received the National Archives of Australia Margaret George Award for her research into the experiences of Australian civilians interned by the Japanese in World War II. Christina is also active in her service to the historical profession in Australia. She is a Book Review Editor and board member of Australian Historical Studies, on the board of the University of Melbourne Archives and an executive committee member of the Australian Historical Association.

Current Research

My current research focuses on the experience of captivity and culture, with particular reference to the experiences of women, children and civilians in the Asia-Pacific in World War II. I am also interested in the representation of that experience on film, television and in novels. The next major project I will undertake relates to Australia's League of Nations mandate over the territory of New Guinea during the inter-war period. The project will explore shifting ideas about the governance of indigenous peoples, twentieth-century settler colonialism and imperialism.

Major Publications

Books
Australia's Forgotten Prisoners: Australian Civilians Interned by the Japanese in World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2007.)
Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2002.)

Book Chapters
'Remembering War and Forgetting Civilians: The ambiguous position of civilian internees in Australian commemorations of the Pacific War', in Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack (eds), National Memories and Forgotten Captivities: POWs, Internees and Colonial Subjects in Japanese Occupied Asia, Routledge, forthcoming 2007.

'Retaining Integrity? Sex, Race and Gender in Narratives of Western Women detained by the Japanese in World War II', in Bob Moore and Barbara Hately-Broad (eds), Prisoners of War, Prisoners of Peace: Captivity, Homecoming and Memory in World War II, Berg, Oxford, 2005, pp. 175-84.

'Impossible History: Trauma and Testimony among Australian Civilians interned by the Japanese in World War Two', in Joy Damousi and Robert Reynolds (eds), History on the Couch: Essays in Psychoanalysis and History, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2003, pp. 165-75.

'Vagrancy, Indolence and Ignorance: Race and Civilisation in the era of Aboriginal "Protection", Port Phillip 1839-1845', in Julie Evans and Tracey Mar (eds), Writing Colonial Histories: Comparative Perspectives, University of Melbourne, Carlton, 2002, pp. 93-113.

'Speaking the Silences: Public Presentations of Historical Research to Affected Communities' in Michele Langfield (ed.), A Question of Ethics, The History Institute, Carlton, 1999, pp. 25-37.

'Captivity, Human Rights and World War II: Japanese Captors and the Military Sexual Slavery of Western Women', in Joy Damousi and Kat Ellinghaus (eds),Citizenship, Social Justice and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives, University of Melbourne, Carlton, 1999, pp. 371-81

'The Parental State: Destitute women and the Magistracy', in Deakin University, Women and History: New Feminist Historians, Deakin University Faculty of Arts, Geelong, 1996, pp. 1-22.

Twomey, Christina, 'Identifying with a "serious social evil": Wife-desertion in mid-nineteenth century Victoria', in Helen Brash, Jan Coulthart and Jane Long (eds), Forging Identities: Bodies, Gender and Feminist History, University of Western Australia Press, Perth, 1997, pp. 69-87.

Journal Articles
'Emaciation of emasculation: Photographic images, white masculinity and captivity by the Japanese in WW2', The Journal of Men's Health, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 295-310.
'Masculinity, emotion and subjectivity: Introduction', The Journal of Men's Health, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 247-250.
'In the front line? Internment and citizenship entitlements in the Second World War', Australian Journal of Politics and History, Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 194-206.
'Revisiting A Town Like Alice', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 21, no. 49, March 2006, pp. 85-102
'Peer Mentoring as an Academic Resource', Australian Universities Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2006, pp. 26-29. (With JaneMaree Maher, Jo Lindsay and Vicki Peel)
'Problems in Paradise: Race, Gender and Historical 'Truth' in Paradise Road', Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, January 2006, pp. 30-52.
'Australian Nurse POWs: Gender, War and Captivity', in Australian Historical Studies, vol. 36, no. 124, October 2004, pp. 255-74.
'Courting Men: Mothers, Magistrates and Welfare in the Australian Colonies',Women's History Review, vol. 8, no. 2, 1999, pp. 231-46.
'Captive Women and Audiences: Internment in the Asia-Pacific in World War II', Meanjin, vol. 58, no. 1, 1999, pp. 45-57.
'Gender, Welfare and the Colonial State', Labour History, No. 73, November 1997, pp. 169-186.
'"Without Natural Protectors": Responses to Wife Desertion in Gold-Rush Victoria', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 28 no. 108, April 1997, pp. 22-46.
'Gender and Australian History in the 1990s', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 12, no. 26, December 1997, pp. 344-56. (With Cathy Coleborne and Vijaya Joshi)

Areas of Research & Supervision

Gender and welfare, nineteenth-century humanitarianism in relation to indigenous people, Australian women's history, war and commemoration in Australia, histories of captivity

Teaching

HSY1111 - Nations at war 1
HSY4730 - Reading and Writing Australian History