2006 Media Releases
Tuesday, 12 September 2006
Biography: Matters of Life and Death - Ian Donaldson to give ABR La Trobe Annual Lecture
The 2006 'Australian Book Review'/La Trobe University Annual Lecture will be presented by Professor Ian Donaldson on 'Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography', on Wednesday 20 September, at 12.30pm.
The venue for the lecture – co-hosted by the La Trobe University Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography – will be the Council Chamber, John Scott Meeting House, on La Trobe’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora, Melway Reference La Trobe University, G5.
Professor Donaldson will look at some of the forces driving the current resurgence of interest in biography, and some of the more enterprising recent examples of the genre.
He says biography, in the widest sense of that term – the chronicling of human lives in any medium: print, sound, film, digital, photographic, painterly – is attracting exceptional interest within Australia and across the world.
Professor Donaldson is Director of the ANU's Humanities Research Centre, Head of its Biography Institute, and Consultant Editor for 'The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'. He is a general editor of 'The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson' (due for publication in 25 volumes in 2007), and is completing a life of Jonson for OUP.
Bookings to Tel (03) 9429 6700 or abradmin@vicnet.net.au
The La Trobe University English Program offers one of the most extensive specialised programs for studies in biography and autobiography in Australia.
Its Unit for Studies in Biography and Autobiography, established in 1996, functions as a centre for interdisciplinary research within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science and the University. It also forges links with the general community where there is widespread interest in biography and autobiography.
• La Trobe University is chief sponsor of the Australian Book Review. The ABR-La Trobe Annual Lectures are also held interstate: this one has already been held in Canberra, and will be delivered at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide on Sunday, 8 October 2006.
For further information:
ABR - Tel: (03) 9429 6700, Email: abradmin@vicnet.net.au
LTU - Tel: (03) 9479 2315, Email: e.raetz@latrobe.edu.au