Forthcoming events
Tuesday 24 June
6:30 pm, Boola Katitjin 360.2.027, Murdoch University
Dr Emily Chambers (Murdoch University) will present a talk, ‘Creating Love and Building Trust: Lady Mary Tudor’s Use of Royal Spectacle for Emotional Persuasion, 1542–1553’.
Prior to her accession as Mary I in 1553, the Lady Mary Tudor (1516–1558) worked to create an image of herself as a member of the royal family. This paper examines her use of ritual. Her performances as a royal relied on persuasion to mobilise the emotions of her family, courtiers, and her supporters. During her father Henry VIII’s reign, she used her residence at the royal court to gain experience in ceremony and diplomacy, while enjoying recognition from her father and stepmother as a member of the royal family. Under Edward VI, Mary fostered a public image of herself as Edward’s princely and Catholic successor by shaping her household as an alternative court in East Anglia. She used public tours, masses, and grand entries into London to build the love and trust of her supporters.
Dr Emily Chambers is an Associate Lecturer in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham, UK, on the influence of personal connections on the agency of eight elite aristocratic and royal women in mid-Tudor England.
A poster is available here.
Earlier events
Wednesday 26 February
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 4, UWA
A brief Annual General Meeting…
followed at 7.00 pm by a talk by Professor Susan Broomhall, ‘Gender and the Dutch East India Company: Multiple Histories, New Perspectives’.
Apologies – Prof. Broomhall’s talk has been cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances
A poster can be downloaded here.
Tuesday 18 March
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 4, UWA
Emeritus Professor Richard Read will present a talk, ‘Secular Mysticism, Narrative and Early Modern Reference in David Risley’s Contemporary Art’
Currently exhibiting in a New York gallery, David Risley is a contemporary artist resident in Copenhagen who ties iconography from early modern visual art with stories of growing up on an English council estate. He does not believe in God but his paintings of Danish windows strive for a kind of secular mysticism that appropriates early modern religious symbolism for contemporary aesthetic effects. The talk invites communal discussion of the viability of such combinations. Is it just presentism, or does storytelling provide historical insight into the communal animation of ancient icons?
Richard Read is Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. He wrote the first book on the British psychoanalytic art critic Adrian Stokes, which won a national prize, and has published extensively on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, film, art theory, and complex images in global contexts. In the last four years he has published two books on landscape painting and sensory perception.
A poster can be downloaded from here.
Wednesday 30 April
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 4, UWA & via Zoom (request link from [email protected])
PMRG since 1981: an informal history presented by Bruce McClintock
Much has changed since PMRG was founded in 1981, but it continues to foster an interdisciplinary interest in all aspects of the medieval, Renaissance, and early modern world. This illustrated talk provides an informal ramble through more than four decades of its vicissitudes.
Bruce McClintock has been a member of PMRG since its first meeting, and is a past Secretary and its current Treasurer.
A poster can be downloaded here.
Wednesday 14 May
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 4, UWA
Dr David Robinson will give a talk, ‘Medieval Ethiopia: Hidden Highlands, Global Crossroads’.
With a history of civilisation extending over more than three thousand years, and being the only African nation never colonised, Ethiopia has loomed large as a representative of the African continent in global consciousness. Nestled within the highlands of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Ethiopia has paradoxically been largely protected from external powers, while absorbing wealth and cultural influences made available by proximity to crossroads of international commerce. This presentation will outline the history of Ethiopia through to the early modern period, examining how interaction with monotheistic traditions and regional political forces enriched the innate complexity of Ethiopian society, and how resonance with mythic European imaginings cultivated the Ethiopian Empire into an objet petit a (motivating ‘object of desire’) for imperial engagement with Africa.
Dr David Robinson has a PhD (History) and Master of International Relations from the University of Western Australia, with a research focus on contemporary history, Great Power conflict and the politics of the developing world. He taught History and Political Science at Edith Cowan University for twelve years, started a transition to secondary education by completing a Master of Teaching (University of New England), but has now settled into a role working for the Government of Western Australia in Aboriginal Heritage. He still retains a strong interest in global history, politics, and African affairs.
A poster can be downloaded here.