Wednesday 18 September 2024, 12:10pm to 1pm
Taiwhanga Kauhau — Auditorium, (lower ground) National Library Wellington. Entrance on Aitken Street or on Zoom.
Rowan Light offers an historian’s perspective on the contested remembrance of the past in recent public debates — its challenges and why it matters.
Why memory matters
From curriculum to commemoration to constitutional reform, the demand to remember, collectively, the often-contested past has become central to contemporary political and cultural life. But what does it mean to participate in collective remembrance and why does it matter?
Resources for our public life today
Drawing on his recent book, Why Memory Matters ‘Remembered Histories’ and the Politics of the Shared Past, historian Rowan Light explores this question. He situates our own local debates about the Aotearoa New Zealand past in a global ‘memory boom’ and the ‘memory turn’ historians have taken to understand their own disciplinary practice.
He suggests that ‘remembered histories’ — the work of memory and history together — can offer better resources for our shared public lives.
About the speaker
Dr Rowan Light is an historian and curator at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts, History, at the University of Auckland. He specialises in the public use of history, memory, and commemoration, specifically as it relates to war and violence. His writing on these subjects has been recognised with awards, including the Ken Inglis Postgraduate History Prize and the Keith Sinclair Memorial Scholarship.
More information can be found here.