Department of HISTORY & ART HISTORY NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 2016 FROM THE HoD: A Plea to Our Alumni A majority of the readers of this Newsletter are it should and graduates of the Department of History and must be our Art History at the University of Otago. As you virtue. If we are graduated, you automatically become a member connected with of the University of Otago Alumni Community. The each other, Department of History and Art History sends out our community the Newsletter electronically to those History or Art has enormous History graduates. potential strength. Those According to the statistical record that the University who graduated holds, as of September 2016, 4394 alumni are listed two or three as graduates in History or Art History. Among them, decades ago 2925 are contactable and, of these contactable are now leaders graduates, 2795 have registered their email in a variety of addresses. So you are one of these 2795! professions in New Zealand and elsewhere. They might be willing to recruit our current students who 2795! You are indeed part of a huge community— are suitably trained by us. Current students will however, alas, this potentially rich community has appreciate opportunities for seeking advice that is remained largely invisible to graduates, current specific to the profession they are interested in from students and staff. Of course, the University’s our graduates in that profession. Also graduates Development and Alumni Relations Office forms may find pleasure in meeting old friends, or get networks and communities of graduates but they new contacts for business through the network of are generally based on geographical regions of the graduates. Thus the Department of History and the world where graduates are currently residing, Art History should no longer be a place where you regardless of the major in which they graduated spend a mere three or four formative years of life but from Otago. There have been no visible links among have little to do with after graduation. A community graduates specifically in History and Art History. of History and Art History graduates at Otago will be a forum where former and current students will I gather that the Faculty of Law has been successful continue to meet, exchange ideas, and offer support in creating a community of graduates. Their to each other. graduates are of course in the same profession, so it is relatively easy to track them down, and So my plea to you, History or Art History alumni, is they are bound by professional ties. This is a sharp this: please help us to build a working and visible contrast to the situation with History and Art History community of graduates. One quick and easy thing graduates, who tend to pursue a very wide range you can do is to ‘like’ our Department’s Facebook of careers. Some are working in the government page. You might also wish to know that one of our sector; others are in business. Some work for New illustrious graduates, Julian Grimmond, has recently Zealand companies; others overseas. Some are created a new Facebook page for History graduates in finance, others in food industry, yet others in at Otago. But there must be other ways of forming film! Some become teachers; others are librarians a lively community of graduates that is connected and archivists, and some others are professional among themselves and with both the Department historians. Perhaps it is unsurprising that no serious and current students. If you have any great ideas attempt has been made to form a community of or new initiatives, please let us know by sending an our graduates—precisely because of the diversity of email to: [email protected]. We are very keen careers that our graduates pursue. to hear from you. But this characteristic of our graduates, I think, Professor Takashi Shogimen should not be viewed as a weakness; on the contrary, Head of Department HISTORY AND ART HISTORY NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 2016 IMPRESSIONS OF CAMBRIDGE Professor Tom Brooking An old lecturer of mine once told me that Cam- that these fine piles of stone were exclusively male bridge is a very ordinary place and yet an extraor- dominated until late in the day with women only dinary place. Look down the High Street and the being admitted to full membership of the Univer- stores seem pretty typical. Head down one of the sity in 1948, even though Girton ‘Ladies’ ‘ College twisting medieval lanes and that impression soon opened in 1866 and Newnham ‘Ladies’ ‘ College in fades. Colleges with an ancient air appear around 1871. the first bend, protecting their elaborate lawns and gorgeous gardens of white, red and even blue tu- Another key difference from ‘newer’ Universities lips as spring finally arrives. Kings College Chapel, like our own is the strong presence of the Church the last truly ‘gothic’ structure in Europe, dominates of England with many Anglican churches, large and the skyline, but is sur- small, dotted throughout rounded by many other at- a city about half the area tractive buildings ranging of Dunedin. ‘Evensong’ from genuinely medieval can be heard in most styles through eighteenth colleges at least once a century quadrangles to re- week in term time where invented Victorian gothic. excellent choirs perform the exquisite music of the My own college—Sidney likes of Byrd and Tallis. Sussex—is a very Tudor Such an important Uni- place with its chimney versity City (and the Uni- pots mimicking those of versity’s 19,000 student Hampton Court. Founded presence is much more in 1596 by the Duchess of obvious than in larger Sussex it is the ‘youngest’ Oxford) naturally attracts of the ‘old’ colleges that top scholars to symposi- go back to 1284 with the ums like the leading Irish foundation of Peterhouse. historian Roy Foster and Oliver Cromwell’s head is social history guru Gareth supposed to be buried be- Stedman-Jones. Similarly, neath the Sidney Sussex the local book festival fea- chapel floor, but I haven’t tured Edmund de Waal of sighted it yet! Isaac New- porcelain fame, Louie de ton supposedly designed Bernieres (Captain Cor- the bridge at Queens relli’s Mandolin and Birds where Erasmus once stud- Without Wings) and Frieda ied and Samuel Pepys has left his library in Magda- Hughes, daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. lene overlooking the lugubrious River Cam. Behind the long lines of colleges facing the town a much All of this makes Cambridge an ideal place to study. photographed area known as the ‘Backs’ abuts the In term time (Cambridge’s three terms are shorter Cam with sweeping lawns and colourful gardens. than our two semesters) there is also a four-course These open spaces point the way to the rather dinner once a week for fellows. Undergraduate ‘brutalist’ library with its Stalinist tower opened in numbers in history have dipped somewhat in re- 1934. I’ll leave you to untangle the relationship be- cent times but there are still healthy numbers of tween such suggestive architecture and the spying post-graduates. Costs of accommodation are high activities of Kim Philby et al. but there is certain cache attached to a Cambridge degree and College life remains somewhat un- Unfortunately this strong sense of antiquity and worldly. continuity is somewhat marred by the realisation HISTORY AND ART HISTORY NEWSLETTER - OCTOBER 2016 THE NEW BEGINNING: The Art History and Visual Culture Programme The Department of History and Art History has housed two distinct programmes — Art History and Theory, and Visual Culture — for the last several years. Next year, the programmes are amalgamated to launch the new Art History and Visual Culture Programme. Dr Judith Collard of the Programme answers questions from Professor Takashi Shogimen, HoD. Takashi Shogimen: From 2017 you and Associate Professor Erika Wolf will launch a new Art History and Visual Culture (ARTV) Programme. What is distinctive about the Programme in comparison to comparable ones at other NZ universities? Judith Collard: I think that the most distinctive element in our new programme is that it incorporates the variety of visual experiences we encounter today. The visual environment is an important part of today’s world and art history and visual culture have always been interested in the meeting of the everyday with more cutting edge elements. My courses place a lot of emphasis on social and artistic contexts, and how dif- ferent aspects of society can have an impact on how we understand art today. The ways in which we teach ‘Medieval Art’, ‘Gender Issues in Art ‘or ‘Totalitarian Art’ reflects this. The fact that we offer courses in these areas is another way in which we differ from other departments in New Zealand. We are a very flexible in what we teach and how we reflect on our society here in Dunedin. TS: You specialize in medieval art and– how and why did you get interested in your research area? JC: I became interested in medieval art because I grew up loving stories about the Middle Ages. My family used to visit a lot of churches when I was a child and I loved Gothic architecture. I remember when I was small looking at one of my father’s books that had a picture of King’s College Chapel and I fell in love. In terms of research, I have always liked the way that images were integrated into the buildings and the books from the time; artists used pictures and sculptures to provide a commentary on the world. TS: For the first year students, you teach ARTV 102 Interpreting Artworks. What are the highlights of your course? JC: ARTV 102 ‘Interpreting Artworks’ takes a different art- work each week and explores how we understand it and what its meaning is.