Constructing a past: Hocken and the memorialising
of history
of history
Tuesday 16 November, 5.30pm, followed by refreshments
Castle 1 Lecture Theatre, University of Otago, Dunedin
ALL WELCOME
The theme of this year’s Hocken Lecture will be drawn from Jock Phillips’ thinking about Hocken and his generation of history-makers. He says “Dr Hocken was a leading member of the first generation of Pakeha New Zealanders who set out to construct a past for New Zealand. He did so partly through his writing but more importantly through his collecting. At the same time there was another way of preserving memories of the past. New Zealanders began to put up memorials, statues and monuments throughout the country to make permanent the memory of significant people and historical events. In this lecture I want to explore briefly the history that Hocken sought to preserve and then to compare this with the history memorialised in stone in New Zealand in 1880-1914”. This is a theme that resonates with the Library’s celebration of its centenary of service to scholarship and documenting life in Aotearoa New Zealand.
