STOUT RESEARCH CENTRE for New Zealand Studies Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies Newsletter December 2018 Staff Research Update Kate Hunter The ‘Feminist Engagements in Aotearoa’ conference held to mark the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage was a tremendous success. Highlights for me included the video message we received from First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon and the sheer variety of papers offered in the course of a packed programme. In addition to more than 60 papers, performances and workshops, there was an exhibition event at Adam Art Gallery, discounted theatre tickets for Circa Theatre, and special tours of He Tohu at National Library. Partners in the conference were National Library and Manatū Toanga - Ministry of Culture & Heritage. The SRC also collaborated with authors for two significant book launches. The first was the launch of Indians and the Antipodes: Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, (Oxford University Press, New Delhi) edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay and Jane Buckingham. There was a panel discussion held in conjunction with the launch featuring Ms Shila Nair, Senior Advisor and Counsellor, Shakti Community Council Inc., Mr Rakesh Naidoo, Strategic Advisor Race Relations, NZ Human Rights Commission, Mr Bhav Dhillon, Managing Director, CEMIX and Honorary Consul of India, Auckland, and Member of Parliament Ms Priyanca Radhakrishnan. The book was launched by Sir Anand Satyanand. Lynda Chanwai-Earl of RNZ recorded interviews with the panellists and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay for Voices (https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/voices/audio/2018650477/voices- indians-in-new-zealand-since-1769) The second book launch was of former lecturer in Film Studies Russel Campbell’s new book, Codename Intelligentsia (History Press, UK) about English filmmaker and Communist activist, Ivor Montagu. Russel gave an entertaining lecture on ‘Ivor Montagu’s New Zealand Connections’ and the book was launched with great conviviality. 1 Both seminar series this year – Stranger than Fiction in May and Research Round-Up in October – were enjoyable and well attended, and once again demonstrated the diversity and strength of New Zealand Studies at the University and in the Wellington community. Further good news in November is that 2014 JDS Fellow Vincent O’Malley is part of a team who have been awarded more than $800,000 over 3 years by the Marsden Fund for their project ‘He Taonga te Wareware?: Remembering and Forgetting Difficult Histories in Aotearoa/ New Zealand’. The team is led by Associate Professor Joanna Kidman (of Te Kura in the Education Faculty). We are thrilled that this important project has been recognized and supported by the Royal Society. The SRC will grow substantially next year with the incorporation of the Museum & Heritage Studies programme. Professor Conal McCarthy and Dr Lee Davidson will be joining us in Wai- te-ata Road and we look forward to their contributions to the life of the SRC, and especially to Thursday staff lunches. Lee is an internationally recognized scholar on tourism, visitor experience and natural and cultural heritage sites. Her recent books are Cosmopolitan Ambassadors: International exhibitions, cultural diplomacy and the polycentral museum by Vernon Press and Scenic Playground: the story behind New Zealand’s mountain tourism with Te Papa Press. Conal has published widely on museums and their exhibitions, and on the roles and representations of Maori in museums. He was commissioned to write Te Papa: Reinventing New Zealand’s national museum, 1998-2018 to celebrate the 20th anniversary, and his latest book The past in the present: How Māori reinvented museums and anthropology in New Zealand, 1890-1940 is due out early 2019. In addition to new colleagues and postgraduate students, we will also have a full house of residents for the first half of the year. Jacqui Leckie will complete her tenure as the JDS Fellow, and Dr Jonathan West will be joining us as the 2019 Fellow to begin his history of New Zealand’s lakes (more on that in the April newsletter). Lynette Shum from National Library is with us over the summer continuing her project on Wellington’s Chinese community, and Dr Miranda Johnston from University of Sydney, and Nick Bollinger (whom some of you will know from ‘The Sampler’ on RNZ) will arrive in the new year. We look forward to an invigorating year in 2019. I wish all our supporters a restful summer with plenty of good books on hand. Richard Hill Richard Hill is guest editor for the December issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies. He recently had a chapter in a book originating in a project directed from Te Tumu, the School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies in the University of Otago: ‘Tōrangapū Ohaoha: Maori and the Political Economy, 1918-1945’, in Michael Reilly, Suzanne Duncan, Gianna Leoni, Lachy Paterson, Lyn Carter, Matiu Rātima and Poia Rewi (eds.), Te Kōparapara: An Introduction to the Maori World, Auckland, Auckland University Press, 2018. Richard also contributed two articles, on ‘New Zealand’ and ‘Policing’, to The British Empire: A Historical Encyclopaedia, edited by Mark Doyle (ABC-CIO, 2018). On 25 July he launched Russell Campbell’s book Codename Intelligentsia: The Life and Times of the Honourable Ivor Montagu: Filmmaker, Communist, Spy at a function jointly hosted by the Stout Research Centre and the School of English, Film and Theatre Studies at Victoria University. A condensed copy of his speech can be found in the Labour History Project Bulletin, 73, August 2018. The Marsden-funded Security and Surveillance Project which Richard heads has published a new article, Aaron Fox’s ‘A Formidable Responsibility’: The Rise and Fall of the New Zealand Security Intelligence Bureau 1940-1945’, in the Security and Surveillance History online series (2018/1). 2 Anna Green Anna has been on research leave during 2018, analysing the oral history interviews recorded for her Marsden-funded research project on family memory. During this time she also attended a number of international conferences to give presentations, as follows: ‘Time and Family Narratives’ at the European Social Science and History Conference in Belfast, 4-7 April 2018; ‘The Missing Link: Pākehā intergenerational memory’ at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark, 23-24 May 2018; and ‘Family Narratives and Historical Consciousness’, International Oral History Association conference, Jyväskylä, Finland, 18-22 June 2018. The Family as Mnemonic Community As part of her research project a symposium, ‘The Family as Mnemonic Community’, was held at Victoria from 28-30 November 2018. The successful symposium drew upon a national, international and interdisciplinary group of invited scholars, with interested members of the university and wider public also present. Speakers included Professor Robyn Fivush from Emory University, Atlanta; Professor Paula Hamilton, UTS and Macquarie University, Sydney; and (via videolink) Professor Alexander Freund, University of Winnipeg. The presentations addressed, in the context of each individual research project, the following broad questions: what kinds of stories or information do families pass down the generations? how are family stories about the past transmitted, remembered, and received? why do family memories and stories about the past matter in the present? what are the advantages and disadvantages of different scholarly approaches? Initial discussions are underway planning an edited book arising out of the symposium. Anna is also working on a second edition of her book, Cultural History, initially published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. Steven Loveridge Steven is continuing to work as a research assistant on a Marsden-funded project on the history of New Zealand security intelligence and is co-authoring the Home Front volume within the First World War Centenary Project. 3 In October Steven presented a paper as part of the Stout Research Centre’s Research Roundup Seminar Series. Entitled ‘New Zealand Society and the Outbreak of the Great War’, the talk re- examined the July Crisis in New Zealand. An adaptation of this talk was also presented to the Wellington Branch Medals Conference, hosted by the Wellington Club later in the month. In November Steven was invited to speak at the National Library of New Zealand at an event to mark the centenary of the Armistice. His paper was entitled ‘Goodbye to all that?’ and contemplated changing and enduring ideas of the war in post-war New Zealand. His latest article on the turmoil surrounding the conscription of New Zealand husbands and fathers during the First World War is published in the latest issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies. Adjunct Research Fellow Brad Patterson In the course of a May-June visit to Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Brad took the opportunity to re-establish links with colleagues at several universities previously linked with the Stout Centre's Irish-Scottish Studies Programme. Encouragingly, continuing interest in collaborative projects was expressed. A particular highlight was time spent in the Shetland Islands assessing the resources available for a possible study of nineteenth-century Shetland emigration to New Zealand. This included time in the Shetland Museum at Lerwick and at heritage centres on Unst, the island from which the greater number of settlers was drawn. Recently re-elected vice-president of the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ), Brad continues to be involved with the fostering of Irish