Margaret Avery
2009 Memorial Lecture

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‘Women, Death and Commemoration: The Transnational History of Nurse Edith Cavell'

Dr Katie Pickles, Associate Professor, History Department, University of Canterbury

Date: Thursday 17 September 2009
Time: 5.30-6.45pm
S Block Lecture Theatre SG.01, University of Waikato

You are warmly invited to join us for light refreshments from 5pm onwards; the lecture will begin at 5.30pm.

Entry by gold coin donation to the MARGARET AVERY AWARD Fund.

The execution of British nursing matron Edith Cavell in Belgium by occupying German forces was portrayed by the Allies as one of the key atrocities of the Great War. Along with the traditional memorials, extensive forms of worldwide commemoration for Cavell included a mountain, a bridge, hospitals, poetry, films and music. Streets, people and animals were named after her. This lecture maps memorials in the landscape to reveal the imposition of Britishness and how a former 'Anglo world', including New Zealand, was constructed across the metropolitan and colonial divides. Placing gender centre-stage, the lecture argues that the importance of Allied commemoration for Cavell (in Europe and the United States) challenges insular understandings of a British imperial past.

This year's speaker:

Katie Pickles is Associate Professor in the History Programme, School of Humanities, University of Canterbury. A graduate of the University of Canterbury in History and Geography, she returned to Christchurch in 1996 after completing degrees at UBC (Vancouver) and McGill (Montreal). Katie lectures in New Zealand women's history, and currently teaches 'Kiwi Culture' and 'Heroines in History'. She is the author of a diversity of journal articles and book chapters that focus on gender, empire, immigration and colonial identity, and is the editor of three books, Hall of Fame: Life Stories of New Zealand Women (1998), Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History (with Lyndon Fraser, 2002) and Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past (with Myra Rutherdale, 2005). She is the author of Female Imperialism and National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (2002 and 2009) and Transnational Outrage: The Death and Commemoration of Edith Cavell (2007). Research on the latter informs this lecture.

>poster (pdf)
>programme (pdf)