Oral History NSW is pleased to present a lecture by historian Dr Tanya Evans. Dr Evans’ last book Swimming with the Spit: 100 years of the Spit Amateur Swimming Club (NewSouth, 2016), was a community history written to encourage readers and swimmers, young and old, to think about their ambles down to the beach, their invigorating swims and refreshing afternoon dips on sultry Sydney-summer days and crisp winter mornings, with an eye on their history. Passion for a sport in the present can overshadow its fascinating past.
This talk will reveal how feminist oral histories of the Spit Club’s female swimming champions were used to trace the ways in which swimming and its historical meanings have changed for women in twentieth-century Australia. It reveals the lack of cultural scripts local female swimming stars could call upon to narrate their life stories and sporting success, the different ways in which they want their lives remembered and how historians might approach the complex construction of these histories when writing public history and trying to share authority in the process.
Dr Tanya Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University. Dr Evans has worked as a consultant for television production companies in Britain and Australia including Who Do You Think You Are? and is also President of the History Council of NSW.
She is a public historian who specialises in the social and cultural history of the family. She is passionate about researching ordinary people and places in the past and incorporating ordinary people and places in the process of her research and the construction of historical knowledge.
When: Wednesday 9 August 2017 Drinks: 5:00-6:00pm, Presentation: 6:00-6:45pm
The event will be followed by the Oral History NSW Annual General Meeting, from 6.45pm
Where: History House, 133 Macquarie Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Cost: $15 (Members)/ $20 (Non-Members) The AGM is free to all
Contact: www.oralhistorynsw.org.au, 02 8094 1239