ABSTRACT
In response to their university’s call for more community-based subjects, Victoria University historians designed a unit entitled Histories of Immigrant Australia.1 Students were taught how to find, sort, and analyse the material evidence present in the built environment that might inform the story of immigration. The two case studies in the 2014 unit were nineteenth century South Melbourne and twentieth century Carlton. Both suburbs contain numerous examples of ghost signs referencing historical, political, and economic practices. They can be readily incorporated into the curriculum of community-based undergraduate subjects that involve walking tours, especially of older urban neighbourhoods. Students were invited to interpret these ghost signs in these localities as elements of the material evidence at their disposal, and to understand them as clues to memory and the past. What did the students actually see? What were the salient features of their interpretation? Within what conceptual frameworks can educators assist students in this very necessary work of interpretation?
