Biography Workshop
School/Centre
Contacts
The Biography Workshop was established by the National Centre of Biography in response to requests by practitioners, students and readers of biography for a forum to discuss a range of methodological issues relating to biography. The group considers recent and long-standing questions about biography.
As Ray Monk and others have pointed out, there is an expanding body of academic literature on biography which asks some of the same questions that Dr Samuel Johnson addressed in his two famous essays on biography Rambler (1750) and Idler (1759):
Is biography fiction?
Who deserves to have a biography written of them?
What details are appropriate to be included in a biography?
Is it possible to know with certainty the inner life of another?
What are the moral or ethical responsibilities of biographers towards subjects, social sensitivities and the truth?
The Biography Workshop meets at 11 am to about 12.30 pm at the ANU and offers the opportunity for informal and relaxed discussion with some of Australia's best biographers in a stimulating environment.
If you are interested in attending any of the sessions, please contact us at ncb@anu.edu.au
Workshops 2021
11 March 2021 - Russell McGregor: Idling in Green Places, Or Pinning Down a Naturalist
Past events
Deep Time Dreaming: A Biographical Reflection
29 Apr 2021
In 2018 I published a book on the lives and times of a handful of Australian archaeologists, including John Mulvaney, Isabel McBryde, Rhys Jones and Sylvia...Idling in Green Places
11 Mar 2021
Idling in Green Places: Or Pinning Down a Naturalist Alec Chisholm (1890-1977) was a self-educated polymath of a kind that has since vanished from Australia’s...In Pursuit of the Red Witch: Revising the Mythologies of Katharine Susannah Prichard
28 Oct 2020
Katharine Susannah Prichard (1883-1969) wrote thirteen novels chronicling communities and industries around Australia, including the landmarks Working Bullocks...Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964
12 Aug 2020
This seminar will address the story of Charmian Clift and George Johnston, a power couple of Australian literature in the mid-20th century, who are the focus...Cassandra Pybus: Truganini
12 Mar 2020
Australian author and historian Cassandra Pybus will discuss her soon-to-be published book Truganini: Journey Through the Apocalypse. The Indigenous museum...Lawrence Goldman: Robert Peel
31 Oct 2019
Peel: One British Prime Minister and Four Personalities Robert Peel was Conservative prime minister briefly in the 1830s and then again between 1841 and 1846...Patrick Mullins: Reflections on Tiberius with a Telephone
26 Sep 2019
Monash University academic James Walter once wrote that it is common for biographers to dive into their work, encounter the typical, everyday issues of...Gabrielle Carey: ‘Only Happiness Here’
29 Aug 2019
‘Only Happiness Here’: The Life and Work of Elizabeth von Arnim Born in Australia in 1866 as Mary Beauchamp, Elizabeth von Arnim was the author of 21 best-...The Politics and Implications of Recent Life Writing
11 Jul 2019
Life-writing is a broad genre encompassing all manner of ‘ego documents’ including autobiography, diaries, journals, letters, memoirs, and oral testimony. It...Ashley Barnwell: Keeping the nation’s secrets
27 Jun 2019
Keeping the nation’s secrets: ‘colonial storytelling’ within and about Australian families Recent studies of the ‘genealogy craze’ focus on how family...
