Sunday, 11 November, 2018

Manning Clark House, 11 Tasmania Circle, Forrest, ACT

10am – 4.30pm

Tickets include lunch – $30 MCH members, $35 concession, $45 non-members

Book here

Discussion, food and music – this event has it all. Join us and have your say.

One hundred years ago,  World War One, “the war to end all wars” ended. Exactly 57 years later on the 11^th November 1975, the Governor-General Sir John Kerr sacked Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

For Australians, both events are linked by more than just coincidence of dates.

World War One was followed by the worst sectarian divide in Australia’s history, partly caused by the bitterness and rancour surrounding the issue of conscription.

This divide was later exacerbated by the terrible economic slump known as the Great Depression.

The Dismissal also left a deep scar in Australian public life. The heroism and loss of life in the Gallipoli campaign in 1915 was hailed as the arrival of a distinctive Australian nationalism, but nearly 60 years later The Dismissal raised fundamental questions about the nature and direction of that Australian nation.

The shaping influence of these two key events, and what we should do as Australians to make this a better society, will be addressed in a challenging program of highly respected speakers and discussion.

Program covers presentations and discussion by:

• Professor Nicholas Brown: Introduction: Is the past really with us in the present?
• Dr Emily Robertson: Missing in Action: the German enemy
• Dr Deborah Jordan: Vance and Nettie Palmer, War, Women and Peace
• Professor Frank Bongiorno: Australia, WWI and the Centenary
• Mr Percy Knight, Wiradjuri Man: War and Indigenous Australians
• Professor Jenny Hocking: Why the Dismissal of The Whitlam government matters today.” 
• Ms Leanne Smith, CEO and Dr Mark Provera, Research Manager, Whitlam Institute
• Mr Andrew Clark, Senior Journalist, Fairfax media: Wrap Up.
• Manning Clark Choristers: Fleur Millar, Director – Sam Row, pianist.

MARTIN BAYER: International Remembrance of the First World War

Monday 22 October at 5.30 for 6pm

11 Tasmania Circuit, Forrest, ACT.

MCH members $5, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $10, non-members $15.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/YRJE

Martin Bayer is a German-born photographer and independent scholar of war serving on an Australian-German research group on First World War commemoration. This talk will discuss differing modes of commemorating that war in various countries and will consider the Australian experience as part of a wider narrative arc examining the international perspective on commemorations.                     

Speaker: Martin Bayer holds a Master of Peace and Security Policy Studies (IFSH/University of Hamburg, Germany) and a BA in War Studies (King’s College London, UK) and besides his vocational education as photographer (Lette-Verein Berlin, Germany). He is author of a First World War centenary study for the German Federal Foreign Office, Not just on Flanders Fields – The First World War as Topic of International Cultures of Commemoration.

Under the label www.wartist.org, he gives lectures on topics such as the cultural dimensions of war and organises art exhibitions, such as Landscapes and Memory at the Bavarian Army Museum, Ingolstadt. In 2015-2018, he took part in an Australian-German research group on the contemporary commemoration of the First World War (ADFA/University of New South Wales/Freie Universität Berlin).

His exhibition Germany’s Dead: War, Grief, and Remembrance with photos of German First World War memorials can be seen at the Australian War Memorial, Saunders Gallery, from 5 Oct to 2 Dec 2018.

Wednesday 17 October at 7.00pm

RN Robertson Lecture Theatre, Building 46, ANU

MCH members, concession (Government Support) and full-time students $20

Non-members $25.00

Booking: https://www.trybooking.com/YJQM

Clare Wright’s new book, You Daughters of Freedom, brings to life a time when Australian democracy was the envy of the world—and the standard bearer for progress in a shining new century. For the ten years from 1902, when Australia’s feminist activists won the vote for white women, the world looked to this trailblazing young democracy for inspiration.

This epic new history tells the story of that victory—and of Australia’s role in the subsequent international struggle—through the eyes of five remarkable players: the redoubtable Vida Goldstein, the flamboyant Nellie Martel, indomitable Dora Montefiore, daring Muriel Matters, and the artist Dora Meeson Coates, who painted the controversial Australian banner carried in the British feminist activist marches of 1908 and 1911.           

 Speaker:  La Trobe University historian Associate Professor Clare Wright has worked as an author, academic, political speech-writer, historical consultant, and radio and TV broadcaster. Her earlier book, The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, won the 2014 Stella Prize and the 2014 NIB Award for Literature and was shortlisted for many other awards.