Hot on the heels of its last Aspects of Antiquity lecture, the University of New England will again play host to a distinguished guest speaker when Christopher Davey, honorary director of the Australian Institute of archaeology, gives a talk entitled “John Garstang and Walter Beasley, and the foundation of the Australian Institute of Archaeology”.

The lecture will take place at 5:30 PM on Thursday, August 25 in The Gallery at Earle Page College.

In January 1935, Walter Beasley, an Australian businessman, met Professor John Garstang (from Liverpool) at his excavation at Jericho. Mr Davey’s lecture will review the life of Garstang and trace his influence on Beasley, who from the time of their meeting funded archaeological expeditions and in 1946 established the AIA.

Christopher Davey has been Honorary Director of the Australian Institute of Archaeology for ten years and has been responsible for re-establishing it at La Trobe University. He studied ancient languages at Cambridge University and archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. He has excavated in Europe, Australia and the Middle East, and has undertaken research into the history of mining and metallurgy and the history of archaeology. Prior to retirement, Chris had a professional career initially as a mining engineer at Broken Hill, and then as a mines inspector, a contract engineer, a university lecturer and finally as an international project financier. Chris is coming to UNE by courtesy of the Ingram-Moore Bequest administered by the AIA.

All are welcome to his lecture, which will be held in The Gallery at Earle Page College. The public is also welcome to attend a research seminar held the following day, Friday August 26  at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building Lecture Theatre 3. At this seminar, Mr. Davey will present a paper entitled “Jim Stewart and Walter Beasley: the beginnings of Near Eastern Archaeology in Australia”.

This seminar will deal with the connection between the two men, which began in 1935, and the consequences for both the AIA and Australian archaeological work in the Mediterranean after Stewart returned to Australia after the War.

In view of UNE being the repository for Stewart’s private collection of archaeological items (in the Museum of Antiquities), copies of his published books with his and his wife Eve’s annotations (in the Dixson Library), and some of his private papers (in the UNE Archives), this seminar should be of exceptional interest. It is Stewart’s material (above all the Cypriot items) which has put our Museum on the international map.

The University of New England has had excellent relations with the AIA for a considerable number of years, and this has been considerably to the benefit of the university. The late Mary Dolan had a long-time association with the Institute; another person at the university is a Life Member of the AIA, on the editorial board of its journal, and a member of its council. Some years ago, the institute lent to the UNE Museum of Antiquities a number of Garstang’s finds from Jericho, together with some of Kathleen Kenyon’s material excavated at Jerusalem. This display was exhibited in the Dixson Library for an extended period.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.

Students at the University of Copenhagen will soon be exposed to Australian culture as portrayed through the satirical lens of Kath & Kim and The Chaser.

These popular Australian television programs are included in the works they’ll be studying as part of a Master’s degree program at the Danish university’s Centre for Australian Studies.

The course, titled “The Dangerous Art of Satire”, will be taught by the University of New England’s Dr Anne Pender, the biographer of Barry Humphries and a leading authority on all forms of satire. “Two-thirds of the course will be on Australian literature and drama,” Dr Pender said, “and will include the work of writers such as Peter Carey, Christos Tsiolkas (author of the award-winning Dead Europe), and Andrew McGahan (pioneer of ‘Grunge Lit’) and stage/film productions such as Bran Nue Dae.”

Dr Pender’s appointment as Visiting Professor (i.e., holder of the “Distinguished Visiting Chair in Australian Studies”) at the University of Copenhagen from September 2011 to January 2012 is being supported by the Australian Government’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. She will be leaving Armidale for Copenhagen on the 10^th of August.

“The appointment was through a competitive process,” she explained. “As part of the application, we had to design a course we’d be teaching at Master’s level – and I chose to design one on satire.” Anne Pender (pictured here) is a Senior Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at UNE. Her published books include One Man Show: The Stages of Barry Humphries (ABC Books, 2010) and Christina Stead Satirist (Common Ground, Melbourne, 2002).

“I’m looking forward to the experience,” she said. “The University of Copenhagen has a well-established Australian Studies Centre, and employs – among others – Australian academics such as the eminent historian Professor Stuart Ward. And I’m excited about the possibility of establishing new connections for UNE – both at the Centre itself and elsewhere in Europe.”

While in Copenhagen she will be finishing her latest book – a study of Australian expatriate writers in the UK. “It will be interesting to be in a place away from Australia and its British heritage while teaching – and thinking about – Australian literature,” she said. “I’m also really interested in contemporary Danish society and the operation of its Welfare State. I was in Denmark for a performance studies conference a few years ago, and found that interest – and grass-roots activity – in the arts was very vibrant.”

The University of New England will soon offer ancient history enthusiasts a rare opportunity: to view and hear about 50,000 fragments of wall paintings more than 3000 years old from the so-called “Palace of Nestor” at Pylos in Western Greece.

The speaker at the University of New England’s next Aspects of Antiquity lecture on Thursday, August 11 at 5.30pm is a specialist on this site which dates to before 1200 BC.

Professor Jack Davis, the Carl W. Blegen Professor of Greek Archaeology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, will be the speaker. He is an acknowledged expert on this site, and in this he follows in the footsteps of Carl Blegen who dug at Pylos and (among much else) found wall frescoes there.

The title of the lecture is, “Reconstructing an Iconographical Program of the Palace of Nestor at Pylos: New Wall-Paintings and their Interpretation.”

Professor Davis, accompanied by his wife Dr Sharon Stocker, who is also an archaeologist, is visiting UNE and Armidale as the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens 2011 Visiting Professor. Currently Prof Davis and his wife reside in Athens where he is the Director of the American School of Classical Studies.

All are welcome to his lecture on Thursday evening, which will be held in the Junior Common Room (above the Dining Hall) at Earle Page College. The next morning, Friday 12 August at 9.30 in the University’s Arts Building lecture Theatre 3, Professor Davis will speak at the School of Humanities weekly Research Seminar series. His paper is entitled, “Dateline 1180 BC: The Palace of Nestor after the Collapse of Mycenaean Society”, and concerns who lived in Messenia in W. Greece, and what level of lifestyle and affluence there was before the coming of the Spartans in the 8th century BC.

Enquiries: Greg Horsley on 6773 2390 or 6773 2555.

Aspects of pre-colonial African societies and traditional Japanese music are among the many topics that will be concisely explored during the University of New England’s first “Speed Research Day”.

The “Speed Research Day”, on Monday 1 August, is in fact the 2011 School of Arts Research and Postgraduate Conference. The format of the conference, which comprises 17 research papers, is a new venture for the School of Arts – and for UNE – in restricting the length of the presentations to 10 minutes each. The presenters will be both postgraduate researchers and academic staff members within UNE’s School of Arts.

John Adeleke, a Nigerian writer with seven published novels to his credit, is working on his eighth novel as part of his PhD project at UNE. The novel will expose aspects of pre-colonial African societies, such as kidnappings, ritual killings, and the ostracism of osu (albino) children, that survive to the detriment of African societies today.

Catherine Hallett is conducting research on the music that accompanies traditional rakugo storytelling performances in Japan. “Rakugo is a form of comic storytelling that developed from Buddhist teaching stories,” she explained. “The music ensemble includes the three-stringed shamisen (pictured here), flute, and percussion.” Among other things she’ll be talking about the gender of the performers – the role of women being usually confined to the shamisen. The rakugo storyteller is, traditionally, male.

Later this year Catherine will be spending three months at the Research Centre for Traditional Japanese Music within Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan, working with an authority on such music.

The one-day conference, in this new experimental format, has been organised by Dr Anne Pender and Dr Tom Bristow. As Dr Pender said, it’s “very demanding to have to speak for only 10 minutes”. And those presenters who will also be participating in the UNE School of Arts round of the international “Three Minute Thesis” competition, to be staged at noon as part of the “Speed Research Day”, will have to focus their thoughts even more sharply in order to interest the audience – and the judges – in their research project in a talk of no more than three minutes.

“The conference program includes papers from all over the School,” Dr Pender said. The subjects include a comparative study of The Divine Comedy and The Chronicles of Narnia, cultural elements in the bilateral relationship of Australia and China, and “connectivity and the unconscious ends of the Internet”.

Several of the presenters – including John Adeleke – are preparing doctoral theses in the recently-introduced “creative research practice” format, which comprises a book-length piece of creative writing as well as a critical analysis of the creative writing project and issues arising from it.

The “Speed Research Day” will be held at UNE’s Oorala Centre, beginning at 9 am and continuing till 4 pm. Everyone is welcome.

UNE has welcomed a highly accomplished musician and academic as the new Head of the School of Arts.

Professor Darryl Poulsen comes to UNE from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, Sydney University, where he was Professor of Music and Associate Dean (Academic). Previously, he was Winthrop Professor of Music and Head of the School of Music at The University of Western Australia. He holds the degrees of Doctor of Music and Master of Music from the University of Western Australia.

Having also graduated from the Conservatoria of Luxembourg, and Liège, Belgium, Professor Poulsen is a highly accomplished musician committed to historically-informed early music performance, playing both baroque and classical natural horns.

He is Principal Horn with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in Sydney and has held Principal Horn positions in European and Australian orchestras and performed throughout Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Australia as well as touring internationally with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

Professor Poulsen’s research is predominantly in creative work: researching and performing repertoire of the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras on period instruments, as well as the commissioning and premiering of new works. As a teacher, he has given master classes throughout Australia, Sweden and Asia and the United States of America and taught horn students from every major Australian city.

In coming to UNE, Professor Poulsen says he was attracted by the University’s strong engagement with the community and the multi-disciplinary and collegial character of the School of Arts, which combines English, Asian and European Languages, Communications and Theatre Studies as well as Music.

He looks forward to encouraging opportunities for teaching and research synergies within and outside of the School of Arts, as well as contributing to some of the Music discipline’s performance activities. While his three adult children are pursuing their own careers and interests, Professor Poulsen’s wife Linnette, who trained as an English Teacher, joins him in Armidale.

In welcoming Professor Poulsen, the Pro Vice-Chancellor and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Professor Jennie Shaw, said she was delighted to have someone of Professor Poulsen’s ‘professional and personal calibre join us at UNE.’

‘His leadership experience at the University of Sydney and at the University of Western Australia, as well as his outstanding international research and creative profiles as a performer and musician, have put him in an excellent position to contribute in many valuable ways to the School of Arts, UNE and the community.’ Professor Shaw said.

HSC extension English students from a number of schools in the northern region received a boost from mentors in UNE’s School of Arts when they came together for intensive writing workshops in May.

The workshops have been offered annually by UNE’s School of Arts as part of a program called ‘UNE Mentor’. The program aims to help students undertaking the extension 2 English unit, an optional area of the HSC syllabus which offers very able students the chance to undertake their own projects in creative writing or critical response.

The workshops supplement on-line mentoring, which is available throughout the period in which students are writing and preparing their projects for submission. In particular, the workshops enabled students to move ahead by helping with structuring issues, by discussing areas of craft such as character and plot and by offering individual advice. Students then had some time to put their knowledge into practice by working on their projects.

Conducted by School of Arts PhD students Julie Hawkins and James Vicars, the workshops were attended by students from Bellingen High School, Grafton High School, The Armidale School, Glen Innes High School and Tamworth’s McCarthy Catholic College.

Staff and students of the University of New England will rally behind disaster-stricken Japan at the Markets in the Mall this Sunday.

The Armidale Japanese Association will set up donation boxes, an origami workshop corner for children, and a small flea market to raise money in support of  victims of the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster in the north-east of Japan.

The campaign has been dubbed ‘Ganbare Tohoku!’ (Cheer up Tohoku!), referring to the region of Japan affected by the disasters.

Those who donate will be given a piece of origami work (such as a crane, frog or other ornamental figure) that the members of the association have made as a token of appreciation. 

All funds raised will be donated to those affected via the Australian Red Cross. 

Dr Keita Takayama, from UNE’s School of Education, is leading the campaign, with support from colleagues from across the university and the local community.

Students enrolled in Japanese language units at UNE and local schools have also been invited to help the campaign at the market stall.

Dr Takayama said: “Many of us in the Armidale Japanese Association, both Japanese and non-Japanese members, felt compelled to act in the wake of this catastrophic event.  Having received heart-felt sympathy, condolence, and encouragement from our neighbours, colleagues, and friends in Armidale, we’ve decided that the fundraising campaign would help Armidale residents and the UNE community communicate their compassion for the victims.”

The Armidale Japanese Association was established by a group of Japanese families and friends in Armidale in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.  The association currently has 14 families residing in Armidale area and is open to anyone interested in and associated with Japan.  The association is planning to run another fundraising campaign at the UNE Japanese Cultural Festival on May 13 and at the Markets in the Mall in April and May.   

With at least 8450 dead, and thousands more missing, the disasters in Japan have devastated the country. Some 335,000 people have been forced into temporary emergency shelters, where they now face shortages of food, clothing and medical supplies. 

“One of the few positive outcomes from such a tragic event is that it unites people together,” Dr. Takayama said. “The formation of Armidale Japanese Association is one such example where people in the community spontaneously come together to work for the common cause.”

Those interested in supporting the campaign can contact Dr. Takayama on 6773 3472 or at ktakayam@une.edu.au.

Adrian Kiernander, Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of New England, is travelling to Las Vegas, where, in a public lecture, he will take residents of that glittering city on a virtual tour through the muddy streets of Shakespeare’s London.

Professor Kiernander’s Las Vegas lecture – part of the highly-regarded “University Forum” series of public lectures – is one of the scheduled events during his current visit to North America as an international authority on Shakespeare’s play Richard III. He is conducting research for an online edition of the play to be included in the Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE).

In the lecture, titled “Richard the Third’s online London”, Professor Kiernander (pictured here) will track the events of the play on an online map of London dating from the mid-sixteenth century (midway between the events depicted in the play and its composition).

“Richard III is probably the first tragedy in the English language that uses so much local knowledge,” he said. “London is referred to more often in Richard III than in any other play by Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s audience would have had immediate associations with all the places mentioned.”

He compared the effect of the play on Shakespeare’s audience with that, today, of some films – particularly horror films – that depict frightening events against a background of recognisable landmarks. “The scary events are made all the scarier by seeing them happening in places you know well,” he said.

Professor Kiernander is visiting the University of Victoria in Canada, where the ISE has its base. From there he will go – at Easter – to Chicago, where he will deliver a paper about the online editing of Richard III at the 38^th Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. “I’ll be discussing possible solutions to problems posed by some unusual differences in the two earliest versions of the text,” he said.

From Chicago he will go to the University of Nevada, Reno, to work with the technical editor of the ISE, then on to Las Vegas to present the “University Forum” lecture, and then back to Victoria in British Columbia.

Speaking of the online version of Richard III to be included in the ISE, he said that it would feature an interactive map enabling people to follow the action of the play through its late-medieval London setting. “It’s very much part of the meaning of the play,” he said. “This local knowledge produced a vividness that – over the centuries – has partly been lost. Reviving it will help actors and readers visualise what it really means to ‘go to Whitefriars’ or ‘to the Guild Hall’.”

Professor Kiernander was an associate director – with John Bell – of a production of Richard III that toured Australia in 1992, and last year co-directed – with Ruth Thompson – an experimental production of the play (in which Richard did not appear on stage) at UNE.

Helena Pastor is an emerging writer already well on the way to fulfilling her ambition of “making a difference to people’s lives” with her work.

The quality and publishing potential of Helena’s work have so impressed the writing community that she has won, in recent years, several highly-sought-after accolades: an Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Mentorship, and three periods of residence at the Varuna Writers’ House in the Blue Mountains.

Her major project at the moment is a doctoral thesis in Creative Research Practice at the University of New England that includes a book-length piece of “creative non-fiction” writing, as well as a critical analysis (in 25,000-30,000 words) of the creative writing project and issues arising from it. She is in the fourth year of this project, and hopes to complete it by the end of 2010.

The subject of her thesis is a community-based program – Iron Man Welders – that is successfully redirecting the lives of teenage boys in Armidale who, for a variety of reasons, have difficulty staying at school. The project, led by the inspirational community worker Bernie Shakeshaft, provides the boys with an environment (the “shed”) in which they can develop both technical and entrepreneurial skills – and self-esteem – in making and marketing metalwork products.

Helena (pictured here) spent time at the shed every Sunday for more than a year. “I was continually surprised at how accepting they were of me,” she said. “They just carried on as if I wasn’t there.” Maintaining a “background presence”, she was able to observe the boys’ interactions and individual development as well as the progress of the Iron Man program itself. “It opened up a whole new world to me,” she said, “giving me an insider’s view of the lives of 16-20-year-olds.”

Then came the writing. “Developing my notes into a workable structure has been hard,” she said. “How much of myself to include in the narrative is still an issue. Then there are the ethical concerns – making sure the boys are comfortable with what I’m writing. So far they have been.”

A major aim of PhD projects such as Helena’s is publication of the creative writing section of the thesis in book form. Reflecting on her ambition to “make a difference”, she said: “I’d like people to have more understanding of what life is like for those who don’t fit in to the mainstream. I want to celebrate these boys’ successes, and to encourage people in other communities to think about starting similar programs.”

The strength of this project, and the quality of her essays and short stories published in literary magazines including Griffith REVIEW, Island, and Westerly, have enabled Helena to be accepted for three periods of residence at “Varuna” – the “writers’ retreat” in the Blue Mountains – to work on her Iron Man manuscript. (The third of these periods of residence – a “Varuna Publisher Fellowship” – is scheduled for August this year.) She describes the environment at “Varuna” as “heaven”: uninterrupted time to write, and opportunities to talk to other writers. “Peter Bishop, the Director of ‘Varuna’, has been very supportive of my project,” she said.

In May 2009 Helena heard that she had been awarded an ASA Mentorship. These mentorships, 20 of which are awarded each year, enable emerging writers to work with professionals in preparing a manuscript for publication. Helena was pleased to learn that her mentor was to be the leading editor Judith Lukin-Amundsen.

The manuscript they have been working on together is a story – with a theme of women’s choices in relation to childbirth – that Helena wrote for the Master of Philosophy (Creative Writing) degree she was awarded by the University of Queensland in 2006. “It was encouraging to know there were people out there who believed in the potential of my manuscript, and were prepared to offer me such a wonderful opportunity,” she said on hearing of her award.

With the support and advice of her mentor, progress on the manuscript has been good, and she’s hoping that – in the event of its publication – it, too, will “make a difference to people’s lives”.

A public lecture at the University of New England will take its audience into largely uncharted territory: between the arias of operas by composers such as Vivaldi, Handel and Mozart.

Dr Alan Maddox is a leading researcher into the theoretical and practical traditions that guided singers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in their performance of recitative – the singing in speech-like rhythms that carries the story of an opera forward between the more formally poetic arias that explore and reveal the emotions of the characters.

“Recitative took up a large proportion of the total time of any opera, and was the vehicle for almost all of the advancement of the plot,” Dr Maddox said. “But it hasn’t received much attention from critics and scholars; people are generally more interested in the arias.”

“The flexible, declamatory style of recitative meant that musical notation could convey only a small proportion of the information needed to bring the drama to life in performance,” he explained. “While singing treatises of the period give few specific guidelines about how to do this, principles for applying many of these ‘missing’ elements in performance were well established in the rhetorical tradition of delivery, which taught not so much how to sing the recitative as how to recite or declaim it.”

Dr Maddox, who is a lecturer in musicology at the Sydney Conservatorium, has conducted much original research on this “rhetorical” tradition in eighteenth-century singing, and has published his findings in a number of scholarly books and journals.

He will present this year’s Gordon Athol Anderson Memorial Lecture in the Oorala Aboriginal Centre, UNE, at 6 pm on Wednesday 2 December. The free lecture will be preceded by refreshments in the Oorala Centre’s foyer at 5.15 pm. The title of the lecture – “‘To vary the voice . . . according to what reason and nature seem to require’, or, how (not) to sing recitative” – quotes a treatise by the eighteenth-century singing teacher Giovanni Battista Mancini titled Practical Reflections on Figured Singing.

Dr Maddox is an experienced public lecturer who gives pre-concert talks for the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and Musica Viva. He approaches the subject of recitative as both scholar and performer, having lived and worked for 10 years as a professional singer in Europe and in Australia, where he has appeared with Opera Australia.

“The main objective in a performance of any opera is to get the story across and convey the drama,” he said. “While it makes good musical sense to present eighteenth-century music using instruments and vocal conventions of the time, it’s certainly not helpful to aim at a kind of ‘museum-piece’ performance.

“In the case of recitative, the singular lack of contemporary documentary evidence about performance practice forces us to look beyond the apparent certainties of the musical text and to think more broadly about ways of understanding music as an activity, as an experience, and as a means of communication.”