Friday Forum - Biography on the Edge
“Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process” wrote Lytton Strachey in 1918. Although biography had long been dismissed by academics as a dubious undertaking, its position within the university has more recently undergone a profound change and now flourishes. This forum brings together leading scholars of biography, who, each in different ways, bring new perspectives and approaches to the field.
How do biographers make their subjects ‘come alive’ as an embodied persona who experiences life changes across time? Paula Hamilton will discuss new approaches to the biographical method offered by the ‘sensory turn’ in humanities. Paula teaches at the University of Technology, Sydney and is a 2010 Visiting Fellow at the Humanities Research Centre, Research School of Humanities and the Arts.
George Orwell once lamented the fact that of the hundreds of millions of slaves on whose backs the Greek and Roman empires rested we only know the names of two or three. The rest, he wrote, ‘have gone down in utter silence’. In his talk Paul Pickering will explore whether biography is condemned to be an elite enterprise. Paul is Deputy Director of RSHA.
Angela Woollacott will discuss her interests in biography ranging from issues of gender and subjectivity, to transnational biographies, and connecting biographies through the study of family and imperial networks. Angela is the Manning Clark Professor and Head of the School of History, RSSS.