Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Lives of Colonial Objects - a sumptuously illustrated, highly readable book


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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