History

Dr C G Pickles

Position

Associate Professor of History

Other Positions

Section Editor for Australasia and the Pacific (with Professor Kate Darian-Smith and Professor Paul Turnbull) History Compass http://history-compass.com/
Co-Treasurer, Canterbury Historical Association

Qualifications

BA(Canterbury), MA (UBC), PhD (McGill)

Room

Room 462, von Haast Building

Contact Details

Phone: +64 (03) 364-2275
Internal Phone: 6275
katie.pickles@canterbury.ac.nz

Postal address
History Department
School of Humanities
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch 8140
New Zealand

Background

Katie Pickles graduated as a senior scholar with a double major in History and Geography from the University of Canterbury in 1989. After working as the editor of Canta, she undertook postgraduate study at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she completed a first class MA in 1991. In 1996 her PhD was granted by McGill University in Montreal. Katie returned to Canterbury to lecture in New Zealand women’s/feminist history. Katie is the author of two monographs and she has edited three scholarly collections. She has published over 40 essays and journal articles on a variety of topics. Her work has appeared in Gender and History, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, New Zealand Journal of History, History Compass, National Identities, Women’s History Review, Environment and History, Canadian Geographer, New Zealand Geographer, Gender, Place and Culture, and the Journal of Historical Geography.

Undergraduate Courses

HIST243: Kiwi Culture
HIST255: Heroines in History
HIST294/394: Recovering Christchurch 1850-2010
ARTS395: Internships

Postgraduate Research Supervision

Katie has supervised a dozen postgraduate students on a variety of topics that have drawn upon New Zealand, Christchurch and British World primary sources. Topics have included gender, race, colonisation, migration, environmental, health, media, imperial, political and women’s history.
Katie is currently available to supervise students interested in pursuing the history of New Zealand, Canterbury, and/or the British World.

HIST443: Issues in New Zealand History

Research Interests

Katie Pickles’ research interests range across, and are often at the intersections, of women’s, gender and feminist history, imperial history, transnational history, British World history, sensory and memory history, gender studies, postcolonial studies and cultural and historical geography.
Continuing her longstanding research in hegemony and the British World, with Catharine Coleborne of the University of Waikato Katie is editing a collection of essays titled New Zealand’s Empire, and is contributing a chapter about the relationship between New Zealand and Antarctica.
Continuing her foundational interest in the history of women, Katie is finishing writing a new monograph about global heroines in history.
Katie also maintains a strong local research focus on the history of Canterbury. She is currently working on sensory history, and is writing a chapter on postcolonial environments for the second edition of Environmental Histories of New Zealand being edited by Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking. She writes the occasional column on thinking historically out of the Canterbury earthquakes.

Recent Publications

Books:
Pickles, Katie 2007 Transnational Outrage: the Death and Commemoration of Edith Cavell, (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan).

Pickles, Katie 2002 and 2009 Female Imperialism and National Identity: Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press), Studies in Imperialism.

Books edited:

Pickles, Katie and Myra Rutherdale (eds) 2005 Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past, (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).

Journal articles:

Pickles, Katie 2011 “Transnational History and Cultural Cringe: Some Issues for Consideration in New Zealand, Australia and Canada”, History Compass, 9 (9), 657-673.

Pickles, Katie 2011 “The Obvious and the Awkward: Postcolonialism and the British World”, New Zealand Journal of History, 45 (1), 85-101.

Pickles, Katie and Angela Wanhalla 2010 “Embodying the Colonial Encounter: New Zealand’s ‘Grace Darling’ Huria Matenga”, Gender and History, 22: 2, pp. 361-81.

Chapters in books:
Pickles, Katie 2009 “Gender, Empire and Colonization” in Giselle Byrnes (ed) The New Oxford History of New Zealand (Oxford University Press, Oxford and Melbourne), 219-241.

Pickles, Katie 2008 “Transnational Intentions and Cultural Cringe: History Beyond National Boundaries”, in Michael Dawson and Christopher Dumitt (eds) Contesting Clio’s Craft (London, SSA), 141-61.

Pickles, Katie 2007 “Kilts as Costumes: Identity, Resistance and Tradition”, in Bronwyn Labrum, Fiona McKergow and Stephanie Gibson (eds) Looking Flash: Clothing in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2007), 41-58.

For up-to-date details of Katie Pickles's research interests and a full list of publications, please visit her UC Spark .

	Transnational Outrage: the Death and Commemoration of Edith Cavell by Katie Pickles Palgrave Macmillan 2007 ISBN 978 1403986 07 8 Hardback, 296 pp. Available online to purchase from The Book Depository and Amazon. On 12 October 1915 German occupying forces in Belgium executed 49 year old British matron Edith Cavell for 'escorting troops to the enemy'. Her death was portrayed by the Allied cause as a major atrocity, stories of her fate flashed around the world and Cavell became a famous heroine of the Great War. Transnational Outrage reinterprets versions of Cavell's arrest, trial and execution through the 20th century. Was Cavell innocent or guilty? Were the Germans wrong to kill a woman? And what was the significance of her death more generally for women's place in war and society? Along with traditional memorials, extensive forms of worldwide commemoration for Cavell included a mountain, a bridge, nurses' residences, poetry, films and music. Streets, people and animals were named after her. Transnational Outrage maps memorials in the landscape to reveal the imposition of Britishness and how a former 'British world' was constructed across the across the metropolitan and colonial divides. It argues that the importance of Allied commemoration (in Europe and the United States) challenges insular understandings of a British imperial past.
	Female Imperialism and National Identity by Katie Pickles Manchester University Press 2003 ISBN 978 0 7190 6391 6 Paperback, 224 pp Available online to purchase from The Book Depository and Amazon. Through a study of the British Empire’s largest women’s patriotic organisation, formed in 1900, and still in existence, this book examines the relationship between female imperialism and national identity. It throws new light on women’s involvement in imperialism; on the history of ‘conservative’ women’s organisations; on women’s interventions in debates concerning citizenship and national identity; and on the history of women in white settler societies. After placing the IODE (Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire) in the context of recent scholarly work in Canadian, gender, imperial history and post-colonial theory, the book follows the IODE’s history through the twentieth century. Tracing the organisation into the postcolonial era, where previous imperial ideas are outmoded, it considers the transformation from patriotism to charity, and the turn to colonisation at home in the Canadian North.
	Contact Zones: Aboriginal and Settler Women in Canada's Colonial Past ed. by Katie Pickles and Myra Rutherdale University of British Columbia Pres s 2005 ISBN 978 0 774811 35 4 Hardback and paperback, 320 pp Available online to purchase at The Book Depository and Amazon. As both colonizer and colonized (sometimes even simultaneously), women were uniquely positioned at the axis of the colonial encounter – the so-called “contact zone” – between Aboriginals and newcomers. Aboriginal women shaped identities for themselves in both worlds. By recognizing the necessity to “perform,” they enchanted and educated white audiences across Canada. On the other side of the coin, newcomers imposed increasing regulation on Aboriginal women’s bodies. Contact Zones provides insight into the ubiquity and persistence of colonial discourse. What bodies belonged inside the nation, who were outsiders, and who transgressed the rules – these are the questions at the heart of this provocative book.
	Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History ed. by Katie Pickles and Lyndon Fraser Otago University Press 2002 ISBN 1 877276 32 4 Paperback, 216 pp, $39.9 Available online to purchase from The Book Depository and Amazon. New Zealand is an immigrant society, but little has been written about the diverse migrant experiences of women to and within New Zealand. Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History, edited by Lyndon Fraser and Katie Pickles, links the lives of very different women through their experiences of migration. This is a multicultural study. It includes migration from north to south, from country to country and from rural areas to town. Much of the material is from the twentieth century. Subjects range from Maori urban migration, to refugees from Nazism, and recent Chinese migration. Some of the essays are life stories. Although diverse, the lives of these women are linked through the common need to adapt to new lives. Shared themes include motivation for migration, the journey, attitudes they experienced in the new environment and the links they maintained with 'home'. Shifting Centres recovers the voices of migrant women and will contribute to an understanding of cultural difference and ethnic origins in the hybrid society that is Aotearoa-New Zealand.
	Hall of Fame: Life stories of New Zealand Women ed. by Katie Pickles Clerestory Press, 1998, ISBN 0 9583706 2 1 Paperback, illustrated, 262 pp In 1917 Bishop Churchill Julius, Anglican Bishop of Christchurch, gave up his home and half his stipend to found a new residential hostel for young women pursuing a tertiary education in Christchurch. Many who have passed through Bishop Julius Hall have justified the Bishop's sacrifice as they have gone on to juggle family responsibilities with the demands of careers as artists, diplomats, missionaries, teachers, travellers and community leaders of many kinds. The 60 life stories in Hall of Fame lead along exciting paths - through war zones, across desserts, and into the turbulent American South during the campaign for Civil Rights. 'Bish' women's stories are stories for all women. In recording times of triumph as well as moments of unexpected trauma they provide a valuable insight into the changing role of New Zealand women since the First World War.