PROFESSOR Joan Beaumont also warns there is a risk of Anzac centenary commemoration fatigue.
She cited low ratings for the Nine Network's Gallipoli series that could indicate Australians have become bored by a story they've heard so many times before.
Immigrants, especially those from war-torn countries, had difficulty engaging with the Anzac legend.
"It has sometimes been seen as the last hurrah of the white Australian male," Prof Beaumont said on Tuesday.
She questioned how the rest of the population related to a foundational national narrative that was essentially centred on white men.
One possible alternative was to reimagine Anzac Day as a time to remember loss in war everywhere.
The Australian National University academic will be speaking at the Gallipoli 1915 conference in Canberra this week.
She is one of a number of speakers reviewing the ill-fated military campaign a century on.
The conference opens on Wednesday with Oxford University academic Hew Strachan presenting the keynote address.
A panel of experts will discuss why the campaign failed.
Prof Beaumont, author of Broken Nation, will discuss Gallipoli and the home front, questioning a belief the campaign amounted to the birth of the Australian nation.
Instead, she argues, Australia at the time was a divided nation with the Gallipoli losses generating a debate about Australia's role there and later in bitter conscription referenda in 1916 and 1917. "
