Head along to the Stout Research Centre for a seminar:
Digital ‘Linked Archives’ and the trans-Tasman literary world
Early twentieth century New Zealand and Australian writers engaged with a global ‘republic’ of letters whether or not they were mobile themselves. Literary historians have frequently presented this in a negative light, in terms of foreign dominance stifling local literary developments and forcing writers overseas as ‘expatriates’. However, local developments are impossible to understand without looking at the international infrastructure that underpinned literary creation, and tensions with national economic, legislative and cultural frameworks. Like the writers and publishers negotiating these complicated spaces, studying transnational literary history involves bumping up against borders as often as transcending them.
In this paper Helen Bones will discuss the challenges and benefits of examining the interconnected early twentieth century trans-Tasman literary world, and the widely applicable linked digital archive technology she is using to visualise historical correspondence networks.
About the speaker
Dr Helen Bones is a writer and historian whose recent publications include ‘Linked digital archives and the historical publishing world: an Australasian perspective’, History Compass, vol 17, no 3 (2019). She was a Research Officer for the ARCHIVER/‘Linked Archives’ project at Western Sydney University until recently, and currently teaches history there. She is the author of The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World (Otago University Press, 2018), which arose from her PhD work (University of Canterbury).
Date: Wednesday 17 July 2019
Time: 4.10 p.m. Tea and coffee from 3.45 p.m.
Location: Stout Research Centre Seminar Room, 12 Waiteata Road, Kelburn