Cirrus@Austlit

'Institutions of public memory are increasingly undertaking co-creative media initiatives in which community members create content with the support of institutional expertise and resources. This paper discusses one such initiative: the State Library of Queensland’s ‘Responses to the Apology’, which used a collaborative digital storytelling methodology to co-produce seven short videos capturing individual responses to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2008 ‘Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples’. In examining this program, we are interested not only in the juxtaposition of ‘ordinary’ responses to an ‘official’ event, but also in how the production and display of these stories might also demonstrate a larger mediatisation of public memory.' (Publisher’s abstract p. 149)

'This article investigates northern Australia's Spanish-speaking community, in order to probe the formation of migrant identity and the perception of Australian society. The community communicated extensively with other members of the global Hispanic Diaspora throughout Europe and the Americas, and used this correspondence to reflect on their experiences in Australia. One individual in particular, Salvador Torrents, wrote a large number of articles and short stories, demonstrating the complex interplay between local and international issues. Migrants used this interaction of local and global events, and the framework provided by transnational Hispanic debate, to critique Australian society and migrants' place within it.' - Author's abstract

‘What are the origins of recent calls for a retrospective pardon for Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and the two other Australian found guilty of murder during the Boer War of 1899-1902? Who’s behind the calls, what course have they taken, and what success might they find? Whatever the calls’ result, historians should resist the underlying rejection of evidence and imagination in favour of patriotic platitudes and narrow legalism.’ (Publisher’s abstract p. 233)