Christina Twomey - School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies
Position
Associate Professor
Phone
61-3-9905 2182
Address
School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies
Building 11
Monash University Victoria 3800
Australia
Location
6th Floor, Menzies Building
Personal History
Christina Twomey has published widely on the cultural history of war. Her publications focus on issues of citizenship, captivity, witnessing, the photography of atrocity, gender and memory. Her book Australian's Forgotten Prisoners (Cambridge University Press, 2007) won a 2008 NSW Premier's History Prize. In 2009, she was awarded the Frederick Watson Fellowship by the National Archives of Australia to work on the history of the Australian National Service Scheme, 1964-1972.
Christina received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 1996, after which she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Deakin University and a lectureship at the University of Adelaide. She was appointed to Monash in 2003.
Current Research
In 2010-12 I will work on an ARC-funded project Captive Australians: The place of the Prisoner of War (POW) in post-war Australian culture. This research involves inquiry into the POW as witness, claimant, photographic subject and politician. It also explores how Australia's regional relationships were influenced by the experience of captivity in World War II. I am further interested in the representation of POWs and civilian internees on film, television and in novels.
In 2010-14, I will also work on an ARC Linkage Project, Australian Generations: Life Histories, Generational Change and Australian Memory with my colleagues Al Thomson, Seamus O'Hanlon and LaTrobe University historians Katie Holmes and Kereen Reiger. The National Library of Australia and ABC Radio National are the industry partners on this large-scale oral history project.
I am concurrently developing new research projects on the relationship between photography and human rights, Australia's role as a mandatory power in the Pacific and a comparative history of forced detention in historical perspective.
Major Publications
Books
Co-authored with Mark Peel, A History of Australia, (Palgrave Macmillan, London, forthcoming 2011)
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 since 2003
‘Wounded Minds: Trauma and Testimony in Ireland and Australia', in Katie Holmes and Stuart Ward (eds), Volatile Substance: Memory and the Uses of the Past in Ireland and Australia, Irish Academic Press, Dublin, forthcoming 2011
‘Severed Hands: Authenticating Atrocity in the Congo', in Geoff Batchen, Mick Gidley, Jay Prosser and Nancy Miller (eds), Photography and Atrocity, Reaktion Books, London, forthcoming 2011.
'Atrocity Narratives and Inter-Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of 'Native Races', 1904-1939' in T. Brooks and B. Taithe (eds), Barbarism and Civilisation: Evil, Atrocity and Pathology in Modern Britain and Abroad, Palgrave Macmillan, London, forthcoming 2011.
Twomey, Christina 'Bearing Witness: Modes of Testimony Among Civilian Internees of the Japanese', in M. Crotty (ed.), When the Soldiers Return, RMIT Publishing, Melbourne, 2009, pp. 34-40.
'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), Forgotten Captives in Japanese Occupied Asia, Routledge, New York, 2008, 10-23.
'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.
Journal Articles since 2003
Twomey, Christina, 'Double Displacement: Western Women Return from Japanese Internment in World War II', Gender & History, 21:3, November 2009, 670-84.
Twomey, Christina, 'Emaciation or emasculation: Photographic Images, White masculinity and Captivity by the Japanese', Journal of Men's Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, Fall, 2007, pp. 295-310.
Twomey, Christina, '"In the front line"?: Debates about the citizenship entitlements of Australian civilians interned by the Japanese in World War Two', Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 53, no. 2, June 2007, 194-206.
Twomey, Christina with Maher, JaneMaree, Lindsay, Jo and Vicki Peel, 'Peer Mentoring as an Academic Resource', Australian Universities Review, vol. 49, no. 2, 2006, pp. 26-29. Contribution: 25%
'Revisiting A Town Like Alice', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 21, no. 49, March 2006, pp. 85-102
'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.
Areas of Research & Supervision
I have broad experience in nineteenth and twentieth century Australia history, and I am particularly interested in supervising topics relating to Australian experiences of war; commemoration, memory and the representation of war; histories of captivity, detention and protection; atrocity and photography; the history of humanitarianism and human rights; Australian women's history.
Current Supervisions (as main)
Jo Hook, 'Catholic Women Religious and Welfare Work in Melbourne' (PhD)
Ashley Carr, 'Law, Culture and Character in Port Phillip' (PhD)
Johnny Bell, 'A History of fatherhood in twentieth-century Australia' (PhD)
Current Supervisions (as Associate)
Stephanie Slade, 'Spiritual Values and Conscientious Objection During the Vietnam War' (PhD)
Simone Sharpe, 'Made in Melbourne: Making, Using and Collecting Domestic Technology in Twentieth-Century Melbourne' (PhD)
Sally Dammery, 'Menarche in Cross-Cultural Perspective' (PhD)
Completed Thesis
Lachlan Grant, ‘The AIF in Asia and the Pacific 1941-1945: a reorientation in attitudes toward Asia, empire and nation' (PhD 2010)
Marianna Stylianou, ‘Combating 'Ignorance... the greatest enemy of health': health education in Australia 1945-1981' (PhD 2010)
Simon Sleight, 'The Territories of Youth: Young People and Public Space in Melbourne, c. 1870-1901.' (PhD 2008, joint supervision. Winner of the Australian Historical Association's Serle Prize for the Best Postgraduate Thesis)
Jacqueline Z. Wilson, 'Public History and the Australian prison museum: an investigation of social memory and the 'other", (associate supervisor, PhD, 2006. Now published as Prison: Cultural Memory and Dark Tourism, P. Lang, New York, 2008)
Lachlan Grant, 'Mateship, Memory and the Australian ex-POW memorial: incorporating the POW experience within the Anzac legend' (main supervisor, MA, 2005)
Teaching
ATS1320 - Nations at war 1
ATS1321 - Nations at war 2
ATS3799 - Special reading unit
ATS4301 - Reading and Writing Australian History