The Lives of Colonial Objects
Edited by Annabel Cooper, Lachy
Paterson and Angela Wanhalla
Paperback with flaps, full colour
ISBN 978-1-927322-02-4,
Otago University Press - $49.95
Colonial objects and their stories
Historic objects invite us into the past
through their tangible and immediate presence – their stories shed light on how
we lived, how we related to each other and to the natural environment. In The Lives of Colonial Objects fifty
objects from our collective past are explored, mused over and revealed. This
sumptuously illustrated, highly readable book encourages us to reflect on why
things matter.
Each object is given its own chapter and is
introduced with a full-page colour photograph and a short essay. The authors
include historians, archivists, curators and Māori scholars. The Lives of Colonial Objects opens up
our history in astonishingly varied ways.
Everyday objects, such as billies, toys,
diaries and scrapbooks, often contain histories quite distinct from their
initial purpose, and come to life with new meanings for later generations. A single
object may tell many stories.
There is delight to be had from the choice
of ‘things’ and the tales they tell us. Which would you like to touch or be in
the presence of? Which speaks to you the loudest, and why?
Some of the objects featured are treasured
family possessions such as a kahu kiwi, a music album or a grandmother’s travel
diary. Some, like the tauihu of a Māori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat or a flying
boat, are housed in museums. Others – a cannon, a cottage and a country road –
inhabit public spaces but they too turn out to have unexpected histories.
The
Lives of Colonial Objects offers a creative, innovative
approach to history that will captivate the general reader and provide a rich
resource to educators seeking a fresh way to communicate New Zealand’s past.
Abouthe authors:
Annabel Cooper is Associate
Professor, Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work at the University
of Otago. Her edition of Mary Lee’s The
Not So Poor and her contributions to Sites
of Gender: Women, men and modernity in southern Dunedin explored gender,
place and poverty in nineteenth-century New Zealand.
Lachy Paterson is a Senior Lecturer at Te Tumu: School of Māori,
Pacific and Indigenous Studies, and a member of the Centre for Research on
Colonial Culture at the University of Otago. He has published the only
monograph on Māori-language newspapers, Colonial
Discourses: Niupepa Māori 1855–1863.
Angela
Wanhalla teaches in the Department of History and Art History at the
University of Otago. Her most recent book, Matters of the Heart: A history of interracial marriage in New
Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2013), won the Ernest Scott Prize for
best book in Australian and New Zealand history in 2014.
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