scholarly journals Centennial Stances: Museums, Morals and the First World War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophie King
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Great War ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Museum Visitors ◽  
Visitor Perceptions ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
First World

<p>This thesis examines the extent to which New Zealand’s Centennial Great War exhibitions impact visitor perceptions, particularly those regarding their personal moral values. Two case studies are used, in order to inform discussions on the current and desired roles of New Zealand museums in relation to activism. While this research aims to provide New Zealand museums with more relevant findings than literature gaps currently allow, any discussions and recommendations may be more broadly applied to other countries. Similarly, despite a focus on the topical and largely publicised subject of WWI ‘100 years on’, discussions and recommendations are also relevant to general queries regarding museum representations, visitor interpretations and activism in museums. This research also intends to emphasise the benefits of interdisciplinary research by including museological, criminological and, to a lesser extent, philosophical literature.  The research methods used within the two case studies can be broadly separated into three parts. First, a thick description method is used to provide in-depth overviews of The Great War Exhibition and Te Papa Tongarewa’s Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War. This section attempts to present a largely unbiased description of Great War representation in New Zealand’s capital. Second, the interpretations of ten visitors from each exhibition are gathered in the form of researcher-accompanied, audio-recorded visits. Such a research method intends to extract visitor thought processes in a relatively fluid and natural way. Finally, visitor questionnaires taken at the conclusion of each visit provide information on visitor demographics and overall thoughts regarding the exhibition, war itself and any inclusion of activism in museums. Alongside museum studies literature, criminological literature and debates are referenced to explain and exemplify the plentiful and diverse perceptions surrounding war.  Overall, this study found most participants to be wary of activism in museum exhibitions. However, it also found that New Zealand museum visitors tended to possess a strong desire to determine their own moral perceptions through exposure to as many alternative narratives as possible. Therefore, any opposition to activism is not, in this case, due to any overriding wishes to favour ‘traditional narratives’. It is consequentially recommended that emphasis be put on clarity, transparency and multi-narrative approaches in museum exhibitions, as visitors appear to so strongly value their right to autonomous interpretation.</p>

scholarly journals Centennial Stances: Museums, Morals and the First World War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sophie King
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Great War ◽  
Thick Description ◽  
Narrative Approaches ◽  
Museum Visitors ◽  
Visitor Perceptions ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
First World

<p>This thesis examines the extent to which New Zealand’s Centennial Great War exhibitions impact visitor perceptions, particularly those regarding their personal moral values. Two case studies are used, in order to inform discussions on the current and desired roles of New Zealand museums in relation to activism. While this research aims to provide New Zealand museums with more relevant findings than literature gaps currently allow, any discussions and recommendations may be more broadly applied to other countries. Similarly, despite a focus on the topical and largely publicised subject of WWI ‘100 years on’, discussions and recommendations are also relevant to general queries regarding museum representations, visitor interpretations and activism in museums. This research also intends to emphasise the benefits of interdisciplinary research by including museological, criminological and, to a lesser extent, philosophical literature.  The research methods used within the two case studies can be broadly separated into three parts. First, a thick description method is used to provide in-depth overviews of The Great War Exhibition and Te Papa Tongarewa’s Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War. This section attempts to present a largely unbiased description of Great War representation in New Zealand’s capital. Second, the interpretations of ten visitors from each exhibition are gathered in the form of researcher-accompanied, audio-recorded visits. Such a research method intends to extract visitor thought processes in a relatively fluid and natural way. Finally, visitor questionnaires taken at the conclusion of each visit provide information on visitor demographics and overall thoughts regarding the exhibition, war itself and any inclusion of activism in museums. Alongside museum studies literature, criminological literature and debates are referenced to explain and exemplify the plentiful and diverse perceptions surrounding war.  Overall, this study found most participants to be wary of activism in museum exhibitions. However, it also found that New Zealand museum visitors tended to possess a strong desire to determine their own moral perceptions through exposure to as many alternative narratives as possible. Therefore, any opposition to activism is not, in this case, due to any overriding wishes to favour ‘traditional narratives’. It is consequentially recommended that emphasis be put on clarity, transparency and multi-narrative approaches in museum exhibitions, as visitors appear to so strongly value their right to autonomous interpretation.</p>

scholarly journals The Portrayal of the First World War and the Development of a National Mythology in New Zealand

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur J. Pomeroy
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
National Mythology

The Memorial Window in the Hunter Building at Victoria University offers interesting insights into the commemoration of the Great War in New Zealand. The Frederick Ellis design shows  strong Anglican Christian iconography, in line with dominant traditions at the College up to the war. The Gallipoli campaign also features much more prominently than the Western Front, since it could be portrayed as a holy crusade against the Turk. As time passes, the ANZAC experience becomes part of the wider New Zealand mythology, but the religious conflict is expunged.

scholarly journals Censorship and Surveillance in the First World War

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 184
Author(s):  
Ross Webb
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

  Review of Jared Davidson, Dead Letters. A history of state censorship, the New Zealand home front, and undelivered mail during the Great War.  

A New History for a New Channel: The Great War and the Launch of BBC2

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Downing
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Television History ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Do So

This article considers the making of the BBC2 series, The Great War, and examines issues around the treatment and presentation of the First World War on television, the reception of the series in 1964 and its impact on the making of television history over the last fifty years. The Great War combined archive film with interviews from front-line soldiers, nurses and war workers, giving a totally new feel to the depiction of history on television. Many aspects of The Great War were controversial and raised intense debate at the time and have continued to do so ever since.

Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Shaheen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Prosthetic Devices ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
First World

Drawing on rehabilitation publications, novels by both famous and lesser-known American writers, and even the prosthetic masks of a classically trained sculptor, Great War Prostheses in American Literature and Culture addresses the ways in which prosthetic devices were designed, promoted, and depicted in America in the years during and after the First World War. The war’s mechanized weaponry ushered in an entirely new relationship between organic bodies and the technology that could both cause and attempt to remedy hideous injuries. This relationship was evident in the realm of prosthetic development, which by the second decade of the twentieth century promoted the belief that a prosthesis should be a spiritual extension of the person who possessed it. This spiritualized vision of prostheses held a particular resonance in American postwar culture. Relying on some of the most recent developments in literary and disability studies, the book’s six chapters explain how a prosthesis’s spiritual promise was largely dependent on its ability to nullify an injury and help an amputee renew (or even improve upon) his prewar life. But if it proved too cumbersome, obtrusive, or painful, the device had the long-lasting power to efface or distort his “spirit” or personality.

Early photographers encounter Tongans

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne L. Kaeppler
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Equipment ◽  
Cultural Information ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Original Photographs ◽  
Natural Historian ◽  
First World

Four early photographers are examined here in relation to their encounters with Tongans and Tonga. These photographers are Andrew Garrett, Gustav Adolph Riemer, Clarence Gordon Campbell and Walter Stanhope Sherwill. Garrett, an American natural historian who specialized in shells and fish, took two ambrotypes of Tongans in Fiji in 1868, which are two of the earliest Tongan photographs known. Riemer, born in Saarlouis, Germany, was a marine photographer on S.M.S. Hertha on an official diplomatic visit and took at least 28 photographs in Tonga in 1876. Campbell, a tourist from New York, took 25 culturally important photographs in 1902. Sherwill, a British subject born in India, moved to Tonga about the time of the First World War. He probably took many photographs with more modern equipment, but only two have been identified with certainty. This article presents information about the photographers and those depicted, where the original photographs can be found and the research that made it possible to glean cultural information from them. These early photographers are placed in the context of other more well-known early photographers whose works can be found in archives and libraries in New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i and Germany. In addition, summary information about two Tongan-born photographers is presented, as well as where their photographs/negatives can be found.

The Italian Empire and the Great War

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanda Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Italian Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Global War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

The Italian Empire and the Great War brings an imperial and colonial perspective to the Italian experience of the First World War. Italy’s decision for war in 1915 built on its imperial ambitions from the late 19th century onwards and its conquest of Libya in 1911–12. The Italian empire was conceived both in conventional terms as a system of settlement or exploitation colonies under Italian sovereignty, and as an informal global empire of emigrants; both were mobilized in support of the war in 1915–18. The war was designed to bring about ‘a greater Italy’ both literally and metaphorically. In pursuit of global status, Italy endeavoured to fight a global war, sending troops to the Balkans, Russia, and the Middle East, though with limited results. Italy’s newest colony, Libya, was also a theatre of the Italian war effort, as the anti-colonial resistance there linked up with the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Austria to undermine Italian rule. Italian race theories underpinned this expansionism: the book examines how Italian constructions of whiteness and racial superiority informed a colonial approach to military occupation in Europe as well as the conduct of its campaigns in Africa.

scholarly journals Saints and Sinners: Arthur Espie Porritt

2013 ◽  
Vol 95 (8) ◽  
pp. 274-275
Author(s):  
Wyn Beasley
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Royal College ◽  
First World War ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Future ◽  
First World

Arthur Porritt, whose adventures, accolades and achievements spanned the globe, was both a surgeon himself and the son of a surgeon. His father, Ernest Edward Porritt, qualified in Edinburgh, became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1898, and practised in Wanganui in new zealand, where Arthur was born on 10 August 1900. His mother, Ivy McKenzie, died in 1914, when Arthur was in his first year at Wanganui Collegiate School; and when his father shortly went overseas to serve in the First World War, the boy became a boarder. The future Olympian distinguished himself as athletics champion, a member of the First XV and a prefect; and for a year after leaving school himself, he taught at a boys' school.

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