True Stories: Writing History
Conference Program
Saturday
9 am Registration
9.50 am Welcome and Opening Remarks
The Hon James J Spigelman, AC
Chair, National Library of Australia Council
10 am Kenneth Binns Lecture—Fictitious Stories: History as Background
Christopher Koch AO
Chair: Warwick Cathro
11 am Morning Tea in the Foyer
11.30am Session 2—Writing the Past
How do we share the history of first contact and European settlement?
Grace Karskens, Robert Kenny, James Boyce
Chair: Martin Thomas
12.30 pm Lunchbreak
2 pm Session 3—Eyewitnesses: The Personal View
How do eyewitness accounts shape and influence the retelling of events, the making of history?
Anna Krien, Kate Darian-Smith, Michael McKernan
Chair: Matthew Ricketson
3 pm Afternoon Tea in the Foyer
3.30 pm Session 4—Breaking News: History’s First Draft
Can journalism tell us the ‘whole story’?
Malcolm Knox, Christine Wallace, Fenella Souter
Chair: Ben Naparstek
Sunday
9.30 am Registration
10 am Session 5 —Popular Fiction:
The opposite of Unpopular Fiction
Bryce Courtney
Chair: Kathryn Favelle
11 am Morning Tea in the Foyer
11.30 am Session 6—Behind Closed Doors: Corporate Stories
From James Hardie to ASIO, are corporate histories significant and compelling?
Gideon Haigh, Joanne Scott, David Horner
Chair: Richard Eccles
12.30 pm Lunchbreak
1.30 pm Session 7—Missing Pieces: Writing the Unwritten
How do we fill the gaps and speak the silences in the historical record?
Alistair Thomson, Kristina Olsson, Edwin Barnard
Chair: Margy Burn
2.30 pm Afternoon Tea in the Foyer
3 pm Session 8—Turning History on its Head: Re-imagining the Past
What would have happened if? Imagining other pasts and new futures.
Andrew Croome, Shirley Shackleton, Peter Stanley
Chair: Zoe Rodriguez
4 pm Closing Remarks
Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
Director-General, National Library of Australia
