Forthcoming events
Cancellation
Unfortunately we have had to cancel our talk planned for Thursday 20 November, and hope that the speaker will be available to talk to us at some future date.
Thursday 20 November
6.30 pm, Arts Lecture Room 4, UWA
Dr Benjamin Szumskyj will give a talk, ‘Sex, Sin, and the Sacred: How Susanna Lived Out the Torah of יהוה’
The paper is a study of the apocryphal book of Susanna. While written in the third century BCE, the book’s debated inclusion in the fifth- to sixth-century CE codification of the Christian canon began a long history in the medieval era in which the story was adapted into art, music, and the subject of biblical commentaries over the centuries. It is a fictional story set during the biblical era, about a Hebrew wife unjustly accused of indecency and threatened with sexual violence by two elders if she did not accept their advances. In rejecting their attempts at lustful blackmail, she is accused of adultery and when it appears that she will be executed for her alleged crime, is vindicated by the truth through the prophet Daniel. While her beauty and commitment to the laws of Torah are magnified, she is also a strong woman who resists the abuse of power, false accusations, and the possibility of rape. It is her trust in יהוה and consistency of character, in accordance with divine laws, that preserves not only her honour but heroism. In addition to exploring her role as a fictional character reflecting the perfect laws of Torah, early interpretation by Christian authors will be compared and contrasted with that of ancient Judaism.
Dr Benjamin Szumskyj has a PhD in Bible Exposition (Liberty University), two Master’s Degrees (Divinity, Liberty University; and Biblical Studies, Moody Bible Institute), and three Bachelor’s Degrees (Education; Society & Environment; and Theology), two Graduate Diplomas (Christian Studies and Librarian Technician), and three Graduate Certificates (Biblical Counseling Institute Ohio; Institute of Jewish Studies; Christian Institute on Disability). Dr Szumskyj was also a certified Biblical Counselor (Association of Certified Biblical Counselors). He currently teaches for Veritas Scholars Academy, a Classical Christian school, and is an independent scholar who specialises in biblical literature and theology.
Poster is available here.
Thursday 11 December
End-of-year gathering for PMRG members at the home of Gail and Helen Thomas.
Members have been emailed details of this event.
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.
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.
Thursday 17 July
6.30 pm, Law Lecture Room 2, UWA [note change from usual venue]
Jennifer Bailey will present a talk, ‘The Many Worlds of Galiene: Time and Reactions to Emotions in an Arthurian Romance’.
A young woman in an Arthurian romance meets a knight and falls in love. She is under time pressure to take some action. Her reaction to her emotion is to project a number of scenarios into the future: to ‘try them on’ to see what the possibilities are, and how she feels about them. In doing so she builds up a highly volatile emotional state which of itself requires action, allowing her to be effective despite, or perhaps partly on account of, some misgivings. This paper traces her emotional journey from initial emotion to action, and will show that the consequences of her choice of action create the impetus for the rest of the narrative.
Jennifer Bailey is a master’s student in medieval literature at Macquarie University, working on a thesis about reactions to emotions in Arthurian literature under the supervision of Louise D’Arcens and Katie Barclay. Her previous academic studies were mostly in the field of music, although she also took units in her bachelor’s degree at UWA in Middle English, medieval history, and Latin. Upon finishing her first degree she went to Oxford to work towards a DPhil in the music of fifteenth-century English composer John Dunstable, including looking at various aspects of how time functions in late medieval mentality and music, but left in order to become an orchestral conductor. She hopes to continue her interest in both time and emotions in medieval literature, in a doctorate.
A poster is available here.
Thursday 21 August
6:00 pm for a 6:30 pm sharp start, Murdoch University Tavern, Murdoch University, South Street.
Quiz Night!
PMRG annual fundraising quiz night is back again! Expect an evening of trivia, table games, raffles, prizes, and fun. It’s not just for history buffs—test your knowledge of geography, music, movies, Australiana and more!
Teams will be competing as tables of 6. Tickets are $20 each, or you can book a whole table for $100. Singles are welcome and will be joined to make complete tables.
Bar snacks are available, but feel free to bring your own munchies!
Please bring $2 coins for table games, true/false heads & tails, and raffles throughout the evening.
Book online soon to avoid the rush: https://www.trybooking.com/DDNPH.
A poster is available here.
Wednesday 24 September
6.30pm, Boola Katitjin 360.2.027, Murdoch University
Dr Alys Daroy (Murdoch University) will present a talk, ‘The Cabinet of Unloved Others: Renaissance Collections and the Sublime Ecologies of Display’.
There is perhaps no better emblem of Renaissance Europe’s entangled epistemologies of nature, empire and the search for knowledge than the cabinet of curiosity. Whether constructed as an ornate room, an Eden in miniature or a printed book of nature, the Wunderkammer collected and displayed fragments of the natural world as a theatre of awe and dominion. While scholarship has emphasised the cabinet’s complicity in colonial violence and taxonomic control, this talk foregrounds its perceptual and affective characteristics. Drawing on biophilic design theory, I introduce the biophilic sublime as a bioculturally mediated response in which fascination with the more-than-human world’s complexity coexists with estrangement. Selected brief readings of early European bestiaries, lapidaries, proto-encyclopaedias and English herbals form a miniature cabinet of curiosities. These texts trace a shift from mythic and cosmological enmeshments to empirical visual epistemologies, yet consistently reveal an enchantment with the curious ‘other’. I argue that this fascination reveals our species’ deep entwinement with other species and biodiverse contexts, even as it is troubled by biophobic impulses and ideological impacts. This mixture of biological and cultural inheritance, so visible in the Renaissance Wunderkammer, further reveals the ecological effects on Anthropocene landscapes while offering imaginative tools for reanimating wonder.
Dr Alys Daroy is a Lecturer in English and Theatre at Murdoch University, Booloo/Perth. Alys is the co-author of ‘Shakespeare, Ecology and Adaptation’ (with Paul Prescott, Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2025) and ‘Sydney’s Food Landscapes: Agriculture, Planning, Sustainability’ (with Joshua Zeunert, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). She has contributed to ‘RiDE’, ‘Stanislavski Studies’, ‘Performance Research’ and ‘Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy and Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities’ (Routledge, 2024), amongst others. Creative work includes for the ECC Venice Biennial, FORM Gallery and with the Conservatorio di Verona, as well as multiple theatre productions (National Theatre Ian Charleson Commendation).
A poster is available here.
Saturday 4 October
2025 PMRG Conference – details on the 2025 Conference page.
Poster available here.