Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 24 March
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Across March we’ll be Reading the City; shining a light on the many ways we understand and talk about Melbourne itself. From the city as an abstract concept to the physical landscape in all its permutations, we’ll be hearing from visual artists and architects, policy makers and designers, novelists and historians. The City of Literature becomes the focus, and you’ll never read it the same way again.
Historians on Melbourne
Who better than historians to uncover the true identity of the city?
Chaired by SBS-TV’s Sam Pang, this will be a playful, surprising and utterly backward-looking dig into Melbourne’s past.
The panel will feature Robyn Annear, Peter McPhee, Jane Rhodes and LM Robinson.
Featuring
Sam Pang
Sam Pang is a writer, presenter and broadcaster. His television credits include the hugely popular Santo, Sam and Ed’s Cup Fever and SBS’s coverage of The Eurovision Song Contest.
2012 sees Sam co-hosting Santo, Sam and Ed’s Sports Fever on Channel 7 and will also be seen in Agony Uncles on ABC1.
Previously, he hosted the history based comedy quiz show, ADbc, and for the past 3 years he has been the co-host of SBS’s coverage of The Eurovision Song Contest. In 2011 he was a creative consultant and writer for the The Marngrook Footy Show on ABC2.
Sam’s work in radio has seen him work for a variety of stations including Triple R, 3AW, ABC and Radio National.
In 2010 he was named in The Age Magazine as one of Melbourne’s Top 100 most influential, inspirational and creative people for the year.
Robyn Annear
Best known for her books Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne and A City Lost and Found: Whelan the Wrecker’s Melbourne, Robyn Annear is also the author of an unpublishable novel set in the city in 1893.
Peter McPhee
Peter McPhee is a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne, specialising in the social history of France since 1780.
McPhee has published widely on the history of modern France, most recently A Social History of France 1789-1914 (London & New York, 2004) and Living the French Revolution 1789-1799 (London & New York, 2006).
He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of Social Sciences, and was awarded a Centenary Medal for services to education in 2003.
Professor McPhee was Provost of the University of Melbourne in 2007-09 and is currently writing a biography of Maximilien Robespierre.
Jane Rhodes
Jane Rhodes works as the Assistant Exhibitions Coordinator for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art.
She was previously the Exhibitions Coordinator at the State Library of Victoria.
In 2007 she was awarded a State Library Staff Creative Fellowship and undertook research to curate the Library’s current exhibition ‘til you drop: shopping - a Melbourne history.
She completed her Masters Degree in Public History at the University of Melbourne in 2008, and continues to be interested in research and reading about history that draws strongly on non-traditional sources.
LM Robinson
LM Robinson has worked as a tutor, university lecturer, freelance writer and teacher.
In January 2009 she submitted the final copies of her PhD thesis. Three weeks later, and while completing the final draft of This Moral Pandemonium, she went into labour with her first child, Ruby Rose.
She moved to Melbourne from a farm in South Gippsland 18 years ago.