Date: 5 April 2019
The impulse to memorialise people and events has led to the establishment of a range of monuments in urban landscapes. Increasingly, monuments have been verbally or physically attacked and, in some cases, removed. This masterclass will focus on the ongoing histories of monuments, testing the implications of preservation and removal, and how memorials can be revived, reinterpreted or replaced. The three speakers will address Captain Cook, counter-memorials and the ‘statue wars’; the memorial to the band on the Titanic in Broken Hill; and the coal monument in Newcastle.
Join the History Council of NSW with Richard Neville hosting guest speakers A/Prof Nancy Cushing (University of Newcastle), Dr Stephen Gapps (Australian National Maritime Museum) and Dr Tamson Pietsch (Australian Centre for Public History, UTS) as they share their skills and experience and discuss this timely and somewhat controversial topic.
Presented by the History Council of NSW with support from the University of Newcastle School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
This is a free event, but places are strictly limited so please register. You can do so here.
When: Friday 5th April 2019, 11am to 1pm
Where: Level 3, Room x321, NewSpace, University of Newcastle
Cnr Hunter and Auckland Streets (Enter on Hunter St), Newcastle.
Cost: Free, but registration is essential. Please register here.
Contact: admin@newcastlewritersfestival.org.au
About the Speakers
Richard Neville
Richard Neville is the Mitchell Librarian and Director of Education and Scholarship at the State Library of NSW. With a research background and expertise in 19th-century Australian art and culture, he has published widely on colonial art and society. He has also been extensively involved in the acquisition, arrangement, description and promotion of the Library’s renowned Australian research collections.
A/Prof Nancy Cushing
Nancy Cushing is an environmental historian based at the University of Newcastle where she is Associate Professor and Assistant Dean (Research Training) in the Faculty of Education and Arts. She has had a long interest in the history of Newcastle and is co-author of Smoky City: A History of Air Pollution in Newcastle(with Howard Bridgman, Hunter Press, 2015) and co-editor of Radical Newcastle (NewSouth, 2015). Her latest book is Animals Count, co-edited with Jodi Frawley (Routledge, 2018).
Dr Stephen Gapps
Stephen Gapps has a long-standing interest in public history and the history of early colonial Sydney. His PhD thesis examined historical reenactments and public commemorations of the past. Stephen has taught public history at the University of Technology, Sydney, and worked extensively as a consultant historian for heritage, museums, film and television and history events and performances. He is currently leading the development of a new permanent gallery display at the Australian National Maritime Museum that explores deep time, environmental and Indigenous histories. His latest book is The Sydney Wars: Conflict in the early colony 1788-1817 (NewSouth, 2018)
Dr Tamson Pietsch
Tamson Pietsch is director of the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS and host of the History Lab podcast. She is interested in ideas and how they get made – both in the past and today. Tamson is the author of Empire of Scholars: Universities, networks and the British academic world, 1850-1940 (2013) and she is currently writing a book about the 1926 world-wide cruise of the Floating University. Together with a team from 2SER 107.3 Tamson launched the History Lab podcast in 2018 as a national platform for history in Australia. Its first four episodes received nearly 30,000 downloads in the first two months.