XIIth DAVID NICHOL SMITH CONFERENCE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
New Voyagings on Old Seas: Performances in Honour of Professor Greg Dening

Venue

Venue: National Library of Australia
Parkes, Canberra, ACT, Australia

Dates

SPEAKERS and ABSTRACTS and PROGRAM and REPORT

Conveners: Professor Paul Turnbull and Dr Paul Pickering

The XII David Nichol Smith Conference will be a very special event. It will celebrate the achievements of Greg Dening, whose many award-winning books and reflective essays have changed how we think about the making of history. Greg Dening has shown us that history is not something we learn. It is something we must make, sensitive to the richness and cultural complexity of our own times, if we are to write with insight and justice of the complexities of people and events as they figure in what are invariably the fragmented and selective records of the past. As Dening has memorably observed, ‘...there is no Before and After in culture. Culture is always Now, in-between, in process.’

The conference will pay particular attention to Greg Dening’s contribution to the history of cross-cultural interaction and exchange in Oceania, with papers and performances by leading indigenous Pacific scholars. Another highlight of the conference will be several sessions devoted to the growing interest in historical re-enactment and the representation of the eighteenth-century in film and new media. In conjunction with these sessions, the National Library of Australia and the ANU’s Centre for Cross-Cultural Research will officially launch South Seas, an innovative web-based resource devoted to Cook’s momentous first Pacific voyage.

The conference will also feature papers on new avenues of research in eighteenth-century history, literature and culture by leading Australian, British and North American scholars. A number of these scholars will reflect on the impact and significance of Greg Dening’s work for our understanding of eighteenth-century Europe, Asia and the Pacific.

Speakers and Performers will include:
Paul Arthur – Murdoch University
Jo Diamond – University of Canterbury
J. Kehaulani Kauanui - Wesleyan University
Jonathan Lamb – Vanderbilt University
Robert Markley – University of Illinois
Iain McCalman – Australian National University
Cassandra Pybus – University of Tasmania
Katarina Teaiwa – University of Hawaii
Ty P. Kawika Tengan – University of Hawaii
Paul Turnbull – James Cook University

Enquiries:

Paul Turnbull (Paul.Turnbull@jcu.edu.au)
Paul Pickering (Paul.Pickering@anu.edu.au)

Administration: Leena Messina, Programs Manager, Humanities Research Centre, ANU
Leena.Messina@anu.edu.au