Free public event, Dunedin, NZ – The 22nd Trendall Lecture ‘Straying from Myth’

The Academy’s Trendall Lecture series celebrates distinguished scholarship in the classics. The 22nd Lecture will be given by New Zealand artist Marian Maguire.
Dates: 6pm-8pm, 28 January 2020

Location: Dunedin, New Zealand

Overview: The Academy’s Trendall Lecture was made possible through a bequest made by Professor A.D. (Dale) Trendall AC CMG FAHA (1909–95), a Foundation Fellow of the Academy. He envisaged the lecture series as ‘an annual lecture or lectures by a scholar on some theme associated with classical studies’.

New Zealand artist Marian Maguire, best known for images which fuse ancient Greek vase painting with New Zealand colonial history, will deliver the 22nd Trendall Lecture — Straying from Myth.

The lecture will occur at the Australasian Society for Classical Studies conference at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, from 28 – 31 January, 2020.

Registration: Visit the Society’s conference website to register.

The National Oral History Association of New Zealand and Ngā Pātaka Kōrero o Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland Libraries invite you to a presentation and discussion with visiting oral historian Indira Chowdhury.

Abstract:

This presentation draws on my attempts over the last decade and a half to create archives of different institutions and organisations in the context of oral history work undertaken in India. This presentation argues that the conceptual consequences of colonialism which defined Indians as being steeped in backward traditions and lacking in history need to be kept in mind when trying to assemble an archive of a formerly colonised people.

Brief Bio:

I argue that the insights gained from interacting with “unheard voices” also enable us to understand elite oral histories from Indian institutions. In what ways do new forms of historical representation incorporate older forms of cultural memory and oral traditions? This presentation will attempt to show how we might re-understand the idea of collecting an oral history archive and the critical ways in which we might interpret its contents within a postcolonial context.

Wednesday 25July, 2018

9:30-12:30pm

Level 3 Waitemata Room, Auckland Central City Library

Please register your attendance: treasurernohanz@oralhistory.org.nz

The Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation presents a free Lecture by Dr Stefano Carboni, director of the Art Gallery of Western Australia:

From Melancholy to Euphoria and More: Visual Representation of Emotions in Persian Illustrated Manuscripts

6pm-7pm Wednesday 27 June at the University of Melbourne

The common perception about Persian miniature painting – better described as book illustration because almost invariably it has a textual, literary or oral context – is that it is elegant, colourful, rather formal in composition, and overall restrained in the way the characters are emotionally involved in a particular moment of the story. Persian illustrators, however, had a clear set of tools and visual tropes to convey feelings such as surprise, love, grief, fear, heroism in the face of death, and many more. Many of the stories told in poetic works by Firdausi, Jami and Nizami, all of which were often illustrated, are heavily charged with impossible love, death-defying trials, heroic quests, and mystic ardour: the written language, often memorized by the reader, is the protagonist while the visual image provides in some way an oasis, a respite for the eye, breaking away from the incessant emotional narrative of the verses. A great chapter for the visual representation of emotions, however, was written during the Ilkhanid (Mongol) period in Iran in the 14th century, a time during which all pictorial rules – if they previously existed – were subverted and we can witness a full range of demonstrative engagement with the viewer.

This lecture is part of the From Melancholy to Euphoria: The Materialisation of Emotion in Middle Eastern Manuscripts Symposium, made possible by support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and the Crescent Foundation. Full symposium details at: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/2ct6

Free lecture. All welcome. Bookings essential. For full details and registration: http://go.unimelb.edu.au/6p56

Dr John Gagné (Department of History, University of Sydney), will give a lunchtime talk for the Medieval and Early Modern Centre on 12 April.

John is freshly back from a visiting Fellowship at the Villa I Tatti (The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) in Florence. He will talk on:

“Dinner with the Greatest Man on Earth, or, Erasmus’s Sword and D’Alviano’s Pen”

Time: 1pm
Date: Thursday 12 April
Place: Rogers Room (Level 3, John Woolley Building A20), University of Sydney

Lunch will be provided, so please RSVP by Friday 6 April if you intend to come, and would like lunch (daniel.anlezark@sydney.edu.au). Please advise of any dietary requirements.

“Reading for Little Rebels: internationalism and radical writing for children”

A public lecture by Kimberley Reynolds, Professor of Children’s Literature, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Date: Tuesday 3rd April, 2018
Time: 6:00pm-7:30pm
Venue: Fox Lecture Theatre, Arts Building, The University of Western Australia
RSVP: http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/kimberleyreynolds.

In our current turbulent times, International Children’s Book Day (ICBD) is a good moment to reflect on the ways that children’s literature has attempted to spread the values of peace, understanding and mutual respect between countries, the need to share resources, and the importance of thinking globally rather than nationalistically. These were also the aims of the radical children’s books published in the first half of the last century in an attempt to encourage children to work to build a progressive, egalitarian, peaceful and sustainable modern world. Many of these books were either first published in the Soviet Union or were concerned with events there, so it is fitting that in 2017, the centenary of the Russian Revolution, Russia is the section of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) that is sponsoring ICBD. Growing up in Melbourne in the 1940s and 1950s, the noted Soviet cultural historian, Sheila Fitzpatrick, recalls reading some of these books and thinking “what fun people seemed to have there…how totally unlike anything in Melbourne”. She was particularly struck by the ways these books offered a collective expectation of a better future.

This talk will present a selection of radical works from the first half of the last century and consider whether current writing for children similarly cultivates visions and skills that will help the rising generation believe in and build a better future.

Kimberley Reynolds is the Professor of Children’s Literature in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University in the UK. In 2013 she received the International Brothers Grimm Award for her contributions to the field of children’s literature research. She conceived and was the first Director of the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature and was involved in founding the UK’s Children’s Laureate and setting up Seven Stories: the National Centre for Children’s Books. She is a Past President of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature and was the first Senior Honorary Fellow of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at The University of Western Australia. Currently she is Senior Editor of International Research in Children’s Literature and editing, with Michael Rosen and Jane Rosen, an anthology of left-wing writing for children in Britain from 1900-1963 titled Reading and Rebellion (forthcoming spring 2018). Recent publications include Children’s Literature in the Oxford University series of Very Short Introductions (2012) and Left Out: The Forgotten Tradition of Radical Publishing for Children in Britain, 1910-1949 (2016).

Free Public Lecture: “Skin Deep: Reading Emotion on Early Modern Bodies”, Prof Evelyn Welch
Date: Wednesday 11 April, 2018
Time: 6:00pm-7:15pm
Venue: Lowe Theatre, Redmond Barry Building, Tin Alley, The University of Melbourne, Parkville
Registrations (FREE): https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=360437&
More information: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/skin-deep-reading-emotion-on-early-modern-bodies

This lecture will explore the ways emotion was understood on the body’s surface and how this was represented both materially and visually in early modern Europe. Based on traditional medical theories, early modern skin was often described as a ‘fishing net’, something that held the body in place and offered a decorative surface but had no function of its own. At the same time, the body’s surface also told you about its interior wellbeing. Learning to read the body meant both examining the exterior and sampling the interior’s waste products ranging from urine to hair and tears.

This approach was as true of animals as it was of people. Manuals described how to read faces and skin, and argued for and against blushing. You could also predict astrological futures by reading the lines on foreheads as well as on hands (a topic known as chiromancy) and even predict fate according to the number and site of spots and moles. Even more importantly, however, was the ability to combine all these forms of inspections with the ability to diagnose understanding humoural disorders ranging from love-sickness, a form of melancholy, to an excess of blood leading to anger.

Evelyn Welch is Professor of Renaissance Studies and Provost (Arts and Sciences) at King’s College London. She has been working on how we learn from things that were made in the past for many years. Writing about clothing, politics and social order, she uses sensory information as well as archival documents to explore the ‘period body’ in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. Professor Welch is the author of numerous books, including Art in Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 2000), Shopping in the Renaissance, Yale, 2005, The Material Renaissance (Manchester, 2007), Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Rodopi, 2011) and Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles and Innovation in Europe, 1500-1800 (Oxford, 2017). Professor Welch is now leading a major Wellcome-Trust funded project on Renaissance Skin, designed to explore how human and animal skin were conceptualised in Europe between 1500 and 1700.

Illuminating the World of the Rothschild Prayer Book: Lecture by Professor Michelle P. Brown

When Tuesday 23 January 2018 06:00PM

Venue State Library Theatre

Details Professor Michelle P. Brown,  Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the University of London, presents the world of medieval illuminated manuscripts, their makers and readers, in the context of the famous Rothschild Prayer Book.  This beautiful 16th century Renaissance masterpiece is a jewel in The Kerry Stokes Collection in Perth. Images of the Rothschild Prayer Book and Professor Michelle P. Brown are presented in partnership with Kerry Stokes Collection.

https://www.slwa.wa.gov.au/whats-on/events-exhibitions/illuminating-world-rothschild-prayer-book-lecture-professor-michelle-p

‘Luther and Dreams’

A public lecture by Prof. Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) at The University of Melbourne.

Date: Monday 4 December 2017

Time: 6.15–7.30pm

Room 153 (Forum Theatre)

Level 1, Arts West North Wing

The University of Melbourne

Parkville VIC 301

Registrations: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/lutheranddreams

Information: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/luther-and-dreams/

Enquiries: che-melb-admin@unimelb.edu.au

This lecture marks the 1517–2017 quincentenary of the European Reformation, set in motion by Martin Luther in the German university town of Wittenberg.

Luther regularly labelled superstition, Catholic dogma, and the beliefs of the Turks and the Jews, as ‘dreams’. ‘Lauter somnia’, pure dreams, was one of his favourite insults, and he liked nothing better than to debunk them. Yet Luther was also fascinated by signs and portents, and though he often joked about dreams, he too noted important dreams. Dreams also happened to be recorded at key turning points of the Reformation, and they give rare insight into Luther’s deepest anxieties and feelings. Discussed collectively, Luther and his followers used dream interpretations to communicate concerns they did not discuss explicitly. This lecture explores how historians can make use of dreams to understand the subjectivity of people in the past.

The lecture is co-hosted by the History Discipline of The University of Melbourne.

Professor Lyndal Roper is Regius Professor of History, Oriel College, University of Oxford, and one of the world’s most renowned historians of early modern times. She is the first woman, and the first Australian, to hold the Regius Chair, and in 2016 she received the prestigious Gerda Henkel prize for her ‘trailblazing’ work on social, gender, and psychological history in the age of the Reformation. Her latest book, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Random House, 2017), is the first historical biography of Luther to be published in English for many decades. She is now writing a history of the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525), the greatest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Professor Roper is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften; she is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

‘Luther and Dreams’
A public lecture by Prof. Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) at The University of Melbourne.
 

Date: Monday 4 December 2017
Time: 6.15–7.30pm
Room 153 (Forum Theatre)
Level 1, Arts West North Wing
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 301
 
Registrations:  http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/lutheranddreams
Information: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/luther-and-dreams/ 
Enquiries: che-melb-admin@unimelb.edu.au
 
This lecture marks the 1517–2017 quincentenary of the European Reformation, set in motion by Martin Luther in the German university town of Wittenberg.
 
Luther regularly labelled superstition, Catholic dogma, and the beliefs of the Turks and the Jews, as ‘dreams’. ‘Lauter somnia’, pure dreams, was one of his favourite insults, and he liked nothing better than to debunk them. Yet Luther was also fascinated by signs and portents, and though he often joked about dreams, he too noted important dreams. Dreams also happened to be recorded at key turning points of the Reformation, and they give rare insight into Luther’s deepest anxieties and feelings. Discussed collectively, Luther and his followers used dream interpretations to communicate concerns they did not discuss explicitly. This lecture explores how historians can make use of dreams to understand the subjectivity of people in the past.
 
The lecture is co-hosted by the History Discipline of The University of Melbourne and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion.

Professor Lyndal Roper is Regius Professor of History, Oriel College, University of Oxford, and one of the world’s most renowned historians of early modern times. She is the first woman, and the first Australian, to hold the Regius Chair, and in 2016 she received the prestigious Gerda Henkel prize for her ‘trailblazing’ work on social, gender, and psychological history in the age of the Reformation. Her latest book, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Random House, 2017), is the first historical biography of Luther to be published in English for many decades. She is now writing a history of the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525), the greatest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Professor Roper is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften; she is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.