W.H. Oliver Lecture at Palmerston North
Our Centre Director, Professor Tony Ballantyne, will be giving the W.H. Oliver Lecture for 2014. This event is held annually at Massey University, Palmerston North in honour of the eminent New Zealand historian, Professor Bill Oliver. Click here for further details of this public lecture.
Annual Local History Lecture
Seán Brosnahan, curator at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, will be speaking about ‘Becoming Toitū: telling the Otago story in a museum setting’. His lecture takes place today, 10 April, at 5:30pm in Moot Court, Richardson Building, University of Otago. All welcome!
Visiting Speakers
This week CROCC is co-sponsoring two visiting speakers. The first is Professor A. R. Venkatachalapathy (Madras Institute of Development Studies), who will deliver an open lecture entitled, “The Birth of the Tamil Author” today (September 2) at 5.15pm (Archway 2). Professor Venkatachalapathy is a leading expert on print culture in south India.
On Thursday 5 September we are co-sponsoring a lecture by Professor Luke Gibbons (NUI Maynooth), a leading Irish cultural critic and literary scholar. Professor Gibbons will be speaking on “Limits of the Visible: Representing the Great Irish Famine” at 5.15pm in Burns 5.
Please do come along!
Paper Work
Professor Tony Ballantyne (Otago) and Associate Professor Craig Robertson (Northeastern University), who is spending his sabbatical in the Department of History and Art History, have organised two events that explore the history and meaning of paper work.
On Thursday evening 23 May (5.30 Burns 2) the distinguished media historian Professor Lisa Gitelman (NYU) will deliver a public lecture entitled the ‘The Social Life of Paper’.
On Friday 24 May there will be a one day research symposium at the Hocken Collections on ‘Paper Work: The Materials and Practices of Modern Information Cultures’. The programme is below. Please email Tony if you would like to attend: tony.ballantyne@otago.ac.nz
Paper Work: The Materials and Practices of Modern Information Cultures
9.20am: Welcome
9.30-11.45am
Barbara Brookes, Committed by Paper: Incoherence and Accountability in the Seacliff Asylum Files
Jane McCabe, The Kalimpong Files: Private and Confidential
1.30-3.00pm
Stephen Robertson (University of Sydney), Private Detectives and the Paper Work of Surveillance in the US, 1855-1939
Craig Robertson (Northeastern University), Handling Information: File Clerks, Efficiency, and the Emergence of the Modern Office
3.15-4.45pm
Tim Rowse (University of Western Sydney), Tabulating Indigenous Populations: Colonial Knowledge in Two Dimensions
Tony Ballantyne, Paper and the Work of Empire: Bureaucracy and British Colonialism
Colonial Origins of NZ Politics and Government
On Friday March 8th, members of the Centre gave presentations on aspects of the colonial origins of New Zealand politics and government. This was our contribution to the “conversation” with the Constitutional Advisory Panel, a body established by the government to canvass public views on the constitution. This was a public event, held at the Otago Museum, and attended by a variety of people throughout the day. Present were two panel members, Peter Chin and Sir Tipene O’Regan, and the panel’s administrative organiser, Lison Harris.
John Stenhouse gave a paper on ‘The Secular State?’
Professor Tony Ballantyne, the Centre director, welcomed those attending, and this was followed by talks on theimpact of religion (Assoc Prof John Stenhouse); the political aspirations of early colonists (Prof Ballantyne); how rangatiratanga was understood in the colonial period (Dr Lachy Paterson); Māori voting patterns (Dr Paerau Warbrick-Anderson); iwi and the state (Dr Michael Stevens); the making of modern politics (Prof Tom Brooking); and the relationship between art and politics (Assoc Prof Mark Stocker). To round off the day, Sir Tipene O’Regan and Prof Erik Olssen offered their thoughts on the day’s events.
Check out more images here on the Department of History and Art History Facebook page.
Imperial Science Lecture
Imperial-Science1 In association with a symposium on the naturalist John Buchanan, a public lecture will be held at the Hutton Theatre, Otago Museum at 5.30, 29 November. Dr Jim Endersby will be talking on “Imperial Science: the Invention of New Zealand’s plants”.
