Papers by Rosanne Kennedy
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Memory Studies, 2023
We take up the challenge to extend the 'archive of mnemonic practices' beyond recent histories of... more We take up the challenge to extend the 'archive of mnemonic practices' beyond recent histories of violence by facilitating a dialogue between scholarship on deep history and the fourth wave of memory studies, both emerging under the sign of the Anthropocene. In so doing, we engage with the problem of transmission as it has emerged in both fields. Works in cultural memory studies provide us with compelling ways of thinking through mediated practices of transmission, but they are limited by their focus on the recent past and on encultured technologies of memory that primarily reflect the European origins of the field. Studies of deep history, which engage transmission among Indigenous communities, by contrast, tend to rely on an account of transmission as precise replication, oftentimes over hundreds of generations. To reconsider and theorize mediated practices of transmission, we draw on the concept of the deep present as formulated within ethnomusicology. This term describes a present in which Aboriginal culture-work and performance both transmits memory of the deep past and evokes that deep past itself, activating it today. We consider two public installations as examples of remembrance of the deep past in urban Warrane/Sydney-bara by Judy Watson and Virtual Warrane by Brett Leavy-each of which is of Country in a way that connects memory over time and activates a deep present. We argue that these instances of memory in the deep present might offer ways of reconsidering the possibilities of a decolonizing future.
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Higher education research and development, Sep 29, 2015
ABSTRACT This paper introduces the concept of ‘reading resilience’: students’ ability to read and... more ABSTRACT This paper introduces the concept of ‘reading resilience’: students’ ability to read and interpret complex and demanding literary texts by drawing on advanced, engaged, critical reading skills. Reading resilience is a means for rethinking the place and pedagogies of close reading in the contemporary literary studies classroom. Our research was across four Australian universities and the first study of its kind in the Australian context. We trialled three working strategies to support students to become consistent and skilled readers, and to equip teachers with methods for coaching reading: ‘setting the scene’ for reading, surveying students on their reading experiences and habits, and rewarding reading within assessment. We argue that the nature and pedagogy of close reading has not been interrogated as much as it should be and that the building of reading resilience is less about modelling or outlining best practice for close reading (as has traditionally been thought) and more about deploying contextual, student-centred teaching and learning strategies around reading. The goal is to encourage students to develop a broad suite of skills and knowledge around reading that will equip them long term (for the university and beyond). We measured the effectiveness of our strategies through seeking formal and informal student feedback, and through students’ demonstration of skills and knowledge within assessment.
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Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism, ed Yifat Gutman, Jenny Wüstenberg et al., New York: Routledge, 2023
In many nations, national holidays have become, like monuments, a site of memory activism, as var... more In many nations, national holidays have become, like monuments, a site of memory activism, as various groups contest how the past should be commemorated on the national calendar. In this chapter, I approach the Australian #changethedate campaign as a form of grassroots memory activism (Gutman, 2017a), in which activists strategically mobilize contested Indigenous memories of Australia’s past to bring about public debate and a wider understanding of the ongoing effects of settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples in the present. Whereas memory activists typically work “outside state channels to influence public debate and policy” (Gutman 2017a, pp. 1–2), what distinguishes the #changethedate campaign is the role that some local governments have performed as drivers of the campaign. This case study suggests the need for greater clarity of the category of the state in memory activism, which can include multiple layers of government with differing positionalities and orientations .
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Cambridge History of World Literature, Ed. Debjani Ganguly, Cambridge University Press, 2021
In this chapter, I consider Guantánamo Diary in relation to two influential traditions of literar... more In this chapter, I consider Guantánamo Diary in relation to two influential traditions of literary witness – Holocaust testimony and Latin American testimonio – identifying their characteristics and considering the ways in which Slahi’s memoir resonates with them. I argue that what distinguishes Slahi’s testimonial performance is his distinctive voice, which is characterized by opposing tendencies. On the one hand, his narrative is transnationally haunted by a global canon circulating through it, with sounds of Kakfa, of Primo Levi, of slave narrative and Mauritanian folktales. On the other hand, his English is miniaturized and Americanized. Building on this analysis, I contend that Guantánamo Diary both demonstrates the potential of testimonial memoir from the war on terror to expand the field of world literature and, simultaneously, exposes the conditions that constrain its form and limit its reach.
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International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 2019
In Australia, public remembrance, particularly relating to national identity and colonial violenc... more In Australia, public remembrance, particularly relating to national identity and colonial violence, has been contentious. In this article, we take Australia's recent bid to join the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) as an opportunity to identify national, local and multidirectional dynamics shaping public remembrance of the Holocaust and colonial violence in Australia. Joining IHRA signifies a belated national commitment to Holocaust remembrance, which has traditionally been fostered in Australia by survivor communities. Significantly, the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) has recently ventured beyond survivor memory, positioning Holocaust remembrance as a platform to identify ongoing human rights violations against Indigenous Australians and other marginalized groups. While this multidirectional framework promotes an inclusive practice of remembrance, we argue that it may inadvertently flatten complex histories into instances of "human rights violations" and decentre the foundational issue of settler colonial violence in Australia. To explore the personal and affective work of remembering settler violence from an Indigenous perspective, we turn to two multiscalar artworks by Judy Watson that exemplify a mnemonic politics of location. the names of places contributes to a local and national public remembrance of settler violence by identifying and mapping colonial massacre sites. In experimental beds, Watson links her matrilineal family history of racial exclusion with that of Thomas Jefferson's slave, Sally Hemings. This transnational decolonial feminist work takes the gendered and racialized body and intimate sexual appropriation as a ground for a multidirectional colonial memory, thereby providing an alternative to the dominant Holocaust paradigm and its idiom of human rights.
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a|b: AUTO|BIOGRAPHY STUDIES, 2022
This article introduces the concept of “domestic humanitarianism” as a critical lens to identify ... more This article introduces the concept of “domestic humanitarianism” as a critical lens to identify the cultural logics and moral economy that inform the pro- duction, narrative and reception of Stephanie Land’s memoir, Maid, and “Three Miles”, an episode of This American Life. This analysis provides insight into the humanitarian solutions and ad hoc gestures to economic precarity that come to substitute for the receding promises of the American Dream. Such compassionate responses, I argue, potentially distract our attention from the slower, collective work of economic redistribution necessary for seeding eco- nomic justice and sustainable living conditions.
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Breaking Intergenerational Cycles of Repetition, ed. Pumla Gobodo-Madikezela, Leverkusen, Germany: Barbara Budrich Publishers. , 2016
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The Encyclopedia of the Novel, 2010
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Traversing the Divide, 2021
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Jill Bennett and Rosanne Kennedy (Eds), World memory: Personal trajectories in global time. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003., 2003
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Marianne Hirsch and Nancy K. Miller (ed.), Rites of Return: Diaspora Poetics and the Politics of Memory, Columbia University Press, New York, USA and Chichester, West Sussex UK., 2011
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Memory Studies
Analysis of the “productive frictions” that emerge when cosmopolitan paradigms are implemented in... more Analysis of the “productive frictions” that emerge when cosmopolitan paradigms are implemented in local contexts may nuance accounts of how and when memory travels, and when and why it stalls, thereby contributing to a better understanding of the cross-border travels of memory. I explore the frictions of truth-telling in Sierra Leone as articulated in ethnographic analyses of local engagement with the normative paradigm of public remembering and truth-telling promoted by the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and mediated in Aminatta Forna’s post-conflict novel, The Memory of Love. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission disappointed victims’ expectations for meaningful transnational relationships, the novel performs and models what I call reparative transnationalism. Through the intimate but public form of literature it imagines entangled transnational futures that work toward the promise of transnational belonging promoted in much writing on transnationa...
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Memory Studies
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Humanities Research
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Romancing the Tomes: Popular Culture, Law and …, 2002
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World Memory: Personal Trajectories in Global Time, Jill Bennett & Rosanne Kennedy, eds. Palgrave Macmillan., 2003
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Papers by Rosanne Kennedy