7 Sept 2020
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Scholarship opportunity
Victoria University of Wellington Summer Research Scholarship 2020-2021 (application details here) This is an opportunity to work with the Imagining Arabia team here in Wellington, based at the National Library of New Zealand “Egyptomania” in department stores ‘down under’ 1890s–1940s Sensational archaeological discoveries in Egypt in the early 20th century caused a wave of ‘Egyptomania’ across the consumer world. Fashions, cosmetics, interior design, and architectural trends all reflected the fascination with ‘Eastern glamour’. Did this trend reach New Zealand? Using the archives of Wellington’s most prestigious department store Kirkaldie & Stains, located in the National Library of New Zealand, the Summer Scholar will research the ways popular knowledge and representations of the ancient world were used to sell consumer goods, and shape ideas of fashionable taste in New Zealand in the first half of the 20th century. |
12 June 2020
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Publication
Josh has published an article in the latest issue of the Journal of New Zealand Studies. The article is entitled '"Certainly Getting About the World": New Zealanders' Experience of the Middle East as a Place during the Second World War', and is available to read and download for free here: https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/jnzs/article/view/6501 |
13-15 February 2020
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Conference
"Heavy and Continuous Sacrifice" - New Zealand Military History Committee conference on the Second World War, Massey University Wellington. Please contact us if you would like details of registration. Kate and Josh will be attending the conference. Josh will be speaking on New Zealanders and the People of the Middle East during the Second World War |
29 August 2019
5.30-6.30pm |
Australian historian Dr Meredith Lake will be giving a public lecture on 'Race and the Bible Down Under' at the Victoria University of Wellington Pipitea Campus, Rutherford House RH105:
Race and the Bible Down Under The Bible is read many ways by many people. In this lecture, Dr Meredith Lake explores the cultural significance of the Bible in Australia and New Zealand. The Bible arrived down under at a time when Europeans were rethinking both Scripture and race. And from land-hungry colonists to Indigenous evangelists, white supremacists to anti-racism activists—people across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have read it very differently, with nothing less than humanity at stake. This lecture will explore how the Bible has been taken up down under, to contest what it means to be human and to cross cultural boundaries—and what we might learn from that today. |
Exhibition
Pilgrimage: Hurley in the Middle East is on at the National Library of Australia until 25 August 2019. Click here for details.
Pilgrimage: Hurley in the Middle East is on at the National Library of Australia until 25 August 2019. Click here for details.
In the news in May 2019... Josh King had a closer look at the final survey for New Zealand's official WWI commemorative efforts and published this analysis in The Spinoff: it turns out that, even by the end of 2018, more people were prompted to think of 'Hitler' than the Middle East campaigns when asked about the First World War...