Michaela Callaghan

Office: 463B204
Telephone: +61 3 9214 8825
Email: mcallaghan@swin.edu.au

Michaela Callaghan is a PhD student involved with the Institute’s Social Memory and Historical Justice: How Democratic Societies Remember and Forget the Victimisation of Minorities in the Past project. Michaela completed a combined Honors Degree in Latin American Studies and Spanish at La Trobe in 2007. Her honors thesis focused on the political uses of indigenous identity in Bolivia.

Topic

The Dance of Memory and Resistance: Recalling Identity in the Peruvian Andes

On May 17th 1980, five masked members of the Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), burned the ballot boxes in the quiet Andean town of Cuschi one day before the national elections. Although, authorities initially ignored this and following acts of violence, this demonstration of defiance by SL was to herald in a bloody and protracted twenty year period of internal conflict.  During the crisis Peruvian society experienced an enduring violence that is unparalleled in the country’s history. In 2000 the Interim government headed by Valentín Paniagua, convened the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC); in a bid shed light on what seemed unimaginable and to recall those “forgotten”.

This project examines the ways in which the Quechua people of the Peruvian Andes have employed traditional dance and music as a means of remembering and (re)connecting with a pre-colonial past, and as a way of reclaiming and re-crafting a traditional indigenous identity. It also examines the relationship between individual and collective memories in recalling key events, such as the Civil War in Peru.

Candidacy

PhD

Supervisors

Professor Klaus Neumann and Professor Denise Meredyth

Publications and Other Research Outputs

Go to Swinburne Research Bank