Author Talk: Challenging ANZAC

The ANZAC legend has shaped Australia’s national identity for more than a century. Yet many experiences of war do not fit within it.
About this Event

In Challenging Anzac, leading historians explore some of these stories: Aboriginal activists, deserters on the Western Front, veterans who took their own lives and soldiers who became radicalized by their service. They reveal how episodes in Australia’s war history that unsettled the Anzac legend – from the relief of Tobruk, nuclear testing on Australian soil and feminist protests against war, to alleged atrocities in Afghanistan – have been elided or adapted to ‘fit’ the legend.

Edited by award-winning historians Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook and Joan Beaumont, Challenging Anzac examines how the reality of warfare has always been at odds with mythic representation and considers why, despite this, the Anzac legend has survived.

About the Speakers

Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and conflict, with a research focus on the Vietnam War, War on Terror, gender, peace, security and postwar reconciliation. Her first book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, won the Oral History Australia Book Award in 2022 and was highly commended for the Memory Studies First Book Award in 2023. She has written widely on anti-war veteran activism, war crimes and the impact of the Anzac revival on Australian veterans’ war memory. She is presently an ARC DECRA fellow at Deakin University.

Max Billington is a PhD candidate (History) at Deakin University. Their thesis concerns the role of Australian military personnel in the British nuclear testing in Australia and the Australian government’s use of warrior mythology and biopolitics to control the representation of and deny recognition to so-called ‘nuclear servicemen’ within the nation’s military history. Max is the 2023 recipient of the Australian War Memorial’s Summer Vacation Scholarship and the 2023 winner of the Royal Air Force Museum’s Undergraduate Prize.

Copies of the books will be available for purchase and be signed by the authors.

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