The Faculty of Arts are hosting a seminar series on interdisciplinary notions of New Zealand culture.

The series seeks to address questions such as How might we think critically about New Zealand, its culture/s, society, history, identity, languages, beliefs and peoples? What might it mean to be Maori, Pakeha, Pasifika, new migrant?

The first series in the seminar will be presented by our very own Chair of the Library Committee, Mike Grimshaw. His topic is Pakeha prophets in the wilderness: the South Island myth revisited.

Friday 4 March
1pm-2pm
Room 213, Psych-Soci building

This seminar critically re-enages with questions of New Zealand & South Island location and identity via the mid-twentieth century work of Charles Brasch, Allen Curnow & Monte Holcroft. It situates their cultural nationalism in reference to cultural and religious theory, arguing we need to  rethink debates of location and identity for Pakeha regarding both ‘New Zealand’ and the ‘South Island’ as a question of belief in the nihilistic space of modernity.