Project Description
This project addresses the experience of displaced Germans (the Vertriebenen, literally the expelled ones) after WWII from from Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Until relatively recently, the topic of the German expulsion has been largely avoided, both in academia and the popular press. Accordingly, one of the major aims of my project is to fill this gap in existing scholarship and public discussion. The first stage of the study will focus particularly on how expellees who immigrated to Canada remember and relate their experiences to such representations in contemporary media, especially film, television and best selling fiction and non-fiction. One particular interest concerns how patterns of remembering (and forgetting) are potentially related to and affected by the "public" or "official" memories represented by mainstream media.
This project addresses the experience of displaced Germans (the Vertriebenen, literally the expelled ones) after WWII from from Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Until relatively recently, the topic of the German expulsion has been largely avoided, both in academia and the popular press. Accordingly, one of the major aims of my project is to fill this gap in existing scholarship and public discussion. The first stage of the study will focus particularly on how expellees who immigrated to Canada remember and relate their experiences to such representations in contemporary media, especially film, television and best selling fiction and non-fiction. One particular interest concerns how patterns of remembering (and forgetting) are potentially related to and affected by the "public" or "official" memories represented by mainstream media.