Invitation to the Last Lecture at JCU (Townsville)

Northern residents are invited to Escape Artists: Gauguin, Fairweather, and their islands, a lecture being presented This Friday (November 1) by Richard Lansdown, Associate Professor of English in JCU’s School of Arts and Social Sciences.

Invitation to the Last Lecture at JCU (Townsville)

First published October 29, 2013

Northern residents are invited to Escape Artists: Gauguin, Fairweather, and their islands, a lecture being presented this Friday (November 1) by Richard Lansdown, Associate Professor of English in James Cook University’s School of Arts and Social Sciences.

The Last Lecture provides an opportunity to bring the community together to celebrate the end of the main teaching period.

It also provides an opportunity for a distinguished academic to address the community on a topic of their choosing.

Summary of Associate Professor Landsdown’s presentation:

Many artists embrace the cultures that spawn them; others – Romantically, Rousseauistically – run as far away from them as they possibly can. No European case is more flagrant or notorious than that of Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), and no Australian case more plaintive and heroic than that of Ian Fairweather (1891-1974). Both took to islands at the far end of the world; each found a very different inspiration as a result.

Richard Lansdown is Associate Professor of English in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, and has taught at JCU since 1997. He is the author of Byron's Historical Dramas, The Autonomy of Literature, Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought, and The Cambridge Introduction to Byron. He edited Henry James' The Bostonians for Penguin Classics, and the Critical Review between 1993 and 2002. At present he is working on a new selection of Byron's letters and journals, and an anthology of the writings of John Ruskin, both for Oxford University Press. His favourite Australian painter is Ian Fairweather -- if Fairweather can be called an Australian, that is.

Lecture times and locations

Friday, 1 November 2013

2.00pm to 3.00pm

JCU Townsville Campus, Education Central (building 134)

Refreshments will be served following the lecture

Registration

JCU Media contact: Caroline Kaurila (07) 4781 4586 or 0437 028 175