Matt Cunningham, Postgraduate student, History
“Familiarising the Foreign”: NZ soldierly narratives on landscape during the Great War
- Matt Cunningham
Moore-Jones, Horace.
Sketches made at Anzac during the occupation of that portion of the Gallipoli peninsula by the Imperial Forces …1915. First series. ((London : Rees, 1916.)
Description: 10 col. plates in portfolio ; 36 cm x 80 cm
Call Number: D568.3 M826 S
“Whilst World War One and the experiences of the ANZAC soldiers form a strong part of New Zealand national identity, the environmental aspects of the campaign have received little attention. Most NZ soldiers in WWI had never travelled far from home, let alone outside the country, so the question of how they perceived, and ultimately reconciled, the alien landscapes on the other side of the world is an important one. By examining the artistic conceptions of the Gallipoli peninsula alongside the diaries and memoirs of those who fought there I aim to assess how the ‘foreignness’ of the wartime landscape was made ‘familiar’ through both the changes wrought by human hands and the mental frameworks developed to describe it.”
Dr. Robin Skinner, Architecture
Why VUWSA didn’t get the architect they wanted …
Robin Skinner
Minute books from the archives of VUWSA, the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association,
and
Minute books from the archives of the New Zealand Institute of Architects (established in 1905 and responsible for setting scales of fees and supervising professional standards, including the conduct of examinations, the discipline of members and the presentation of awards, until its reformation in 1963).
“In 1947 VUC students fought to have Ernst Plischke design their proposed student union building. However, architects’ institute archives indicate that professional and personal antagonisms made sure that this would never occur.”
Dick Corballis
Prof. Dick Corballis, Biographer
The Various Facets of Bruce Mason: A Biography
Literary archives of dramatist and critic Bruce Mason (1921-1982), which he deposited annually with the Library after receiving an honorary doctorate in 1977 from Victoria University of Wellington, where he had graduated BA in 1946.
“Bruce Mason is best known as a playwright. He and Shakespeare wrote about the same number of plays, and his range was broader than the bard’s – revues, musicals, radio and television plays, solo performances, as well as tragedies and comedies. And Mason was also a writer of stories (and a few poems), a fine athlete, a very good pianist, a lover of languages other than English (including Maori), a frequent commentator on social, political and artistic issues, an arts reviewer for various media, a house-husband, and an occasional senior employee in several different companies. The Mason papers held in the Beaglehole Room provide detailed accounts of all these facets, but they do not help a biographer to devise an overall structure for them. It is this issue that most involves me at present.”