Melbourne Museum, Museum Victoria

Published: 30 Apr 2008

History and the Meaning of Things 2008 Seminar Series presents

Reading the Garden

In this presentation, two historians will discuss the role of source material in the writing of garden history. They will look at the ways in which gardens, and their makers, leave behind material and textual traces of themselves and their work. These take the form of remnant sites, garden plans, published articles and books, archived letters and journals, photographs, and paintings. The garden historian must piece together the gardens of the past by referring to site and place as well as approaching the archive. They must also discern history in the everyday – finding it in a wall of rusty tools as well as in a ‘heritage’ landscape.

Dr Kylie Mirmohamadi is an Honorary Research Associate in the History Department at La Trobe University, and has recently co-authored Reading the Garden: The Settlement of Australia (Melbourne University Press). As well as working in Australian garden history, she is currently researching the literary cultures of colonial Melbourne.

Dr Katie Holmes is a Reader and Associate Professor of History at La Trobe University. Her previous work includes Spaces in Her Day: Australian women’s diaries of the 1920s & 1930s (Allen & Unwin 1995) and she is a co-author of Reading the Garden: The Settlement of Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2008). She is currently working on a book about women’s writing of the garden: Fertile Ground: Australian women writing the garden.

Free entry, Bookings essential
For RSVP and information contact:
Dr Charlotte Smith
Senior Curator
History & Technology Department
Phone 8341 7384
Email csmith@museum.vic.gov.au


A date for your diaries: Matthew Churchward and Helen Privett from Museum Victoria will present The Long and Winding Road: Reclaiming the Last Cobb & Co Coach on Wednesday 4 June

Museum Victoria

Enquiries

Dr Charlotte Smith
Senior Curator
Tel: +61 03 8341 7384
Fax: +61 03 8341 7722
Email