Papers by Emma-Jean Kelly
Back Story Journal of New Zealand Art, Media & Design History, 2020
This paper explores the work of Pauline Thompson (1942-2012), an Auckland based artist who painte... more This paper explores the work of Pauline Thompson (1942-2012), an Auckland based artist who painted throughout her adult life. Although she received local critical acclaim for her work in a ‘Pop Art Idiom’ in the 1960s, as Pauline’s work shifted to a more ‘metaphysical’ style she arguably became less fashionable. This paper considers the reception of her work by art critics, the context in which she was creating her work, and the general discourse of art critics in Aotearoa over the period of her career. Pauline’s own writings and discourse on her practice are interpolated into the discussion. This paper was first presented at the conference of PHANZA (Professional Historians Aotearoa New Zealand Association) in 2019, and following feedback, has been developed into this article. The author knew Pauline Thompson personally, and interweaves informal discussions she had with the painter into this narrative.
Te Kete Kōrero-a-Waha o te Motu Oral History in New Zealand, 2022
The Clerical Workers Union was once a powerful space for (largely) women workers to share their e... more The Clerical Workers Union was once a powerful space for (largely) women workers to share their experiences, learn from eachother, and challenge the bosses. One of the ways they did this was through song. Therese O'Connell was a worker in the Union and has written this paper with Emma-Jean Kelly to tell this story.
Archifacts, Journal of Archivists and Record Keepers Association of New Zealand, 2016
Simon Denny was the artist representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2015. This... more Simon Denny was the artist representing Aotearoa New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2015. This article begins with a discussion of a statue of Napoleon as a Roman emperor, hidden in plain sight in the Museo Correr of the Piazza San Marco - an intriguing introduction to Denny's exhibition down the hall on 'Secret Power'.
New Zealand Journal of Public History NZJPH, 2022
This article is very personal; it is about my family and their history of struggles with mental h... more This article is very personal; it is about my family and their history of struggles with mental health. But it is also universal, in that it is a colonial story of displaced people moving from one end of the earth to the other for a better life, only to displace other indigenous peoples. It is a story of an Irish family who fought for independence in their own country, only to work for the state and take Māori land to make a farm in Aotearoa. Today intergenerational trauma is often cited as the reason for adverse health outcomes. Although this is hard to prove, the mental health challenges some of my family have experienced certainly could be attributed
to trauma – or maybe they were just unlucky to inherit a tendency towards mental illness from their ancestors. This article uses material objects to trace something of a family history of colonisation and mental health.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 2016
Review(s) of: Growing up with girlpower: Girlhood on screen and in everyday life, by Hains, Rebec... more Review(s) of: Growing up with girlpower: Girlhood on screen and in everyday life, by Hains, Rebecca C., Peter Lang, New York, 2012, ISBN 9 7814 3311 1389, x+315 pp., US$36.95.
Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2016
Abstract This article emerges from a wider study on bicultural film archiving practice. It focuse... more Abstract This article emerges from a wider study on bicultural film archiving practice. It focuses on Jonathan Dennis as a subject of (my) archiving, and as a distinctive archivist himself in relation to a specific archive at a particular moment. Dennis practice differed significantly from North American and European conventions contemporaneous with his life work. The charismatic founding director of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (formerly The New Zealand Film Archive) Jonathan Dennis (1953–2002) became a conduit for tensions and debates during the 1981–2002 period in relation to indigenous and non indigenous presentation of (film) archival materials. This resulted in a film archive and curatorship practice which differed significantly from that of the North American and European archives he originally sought to emulate. As a Pākehā (non Māori/indigenous New Zealander) with a strong sense of social justice he argued for an awareness of geographical location and cultural context in his work. He supported a philosophical shift in archival practice, by engaging indigenous peoples in developing creative and innovative exhibitions and programmes from the 1980s period until his death. Note: From 1988 the official name for the New Zealand Film Archive was Ngā Kaitiaki o ngā Taonga Whitiāhua (Guardians of the Treasured Images of Light). Since August 2014 the institution is called Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero to acknowledge the acquisition of the state-owned Television NZ Archive and Sound Archives from Radio NZ. For brevity’s sake the Archive is referred to throughout as NTSV (Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision). Key: NTSV PP JD refers to the NTSV Personal Papers of Jonathan Dennis (uncatalogued at time of writing).
Media International Australia
This book attempts to contribute to the literature on ‘girl studies’, which is a field with which... more This book attempts to contribute to the literature on ‘girl studies’, which is a field with which I thought I was unfamiliar before reading her text. However, I was quick to find out within the first few pages that girl studies as she defines it engages with feminist theory and cultural studies scholarship. The book opens with a survey of the literature in the ‘girl studies’ area, and includes an intriguing description of US-based feminist researchers engaging mainstream media to spread key messages of their findings. This is useful in setting a context for the study, and successfully demonstrates how activist-based research and media interest perhaps helped lead to a shift in gender role representations in children’s television hero characters in the 1990s and 2000s. Hains also describes the impact of the huge success of the UK-based musical group The Spice Girls and their message of ‘girl power’ on children in the United States. The ‘marketing strategy’ of the Spice Girls is critiqued, and the earlier activity of the less commercially focused US-based Riot Grrrls (female punk bands who originally used the term ‘girl power’) is also described. Where I think Hains’ book is most successful is in its demonstration of the importance of committed engagement with the researched group through methodical and ongoing qualitative data collections. Hains spent years collecting data at set time periods, returning at various stages to find out how these girls’ views had changed. She worked with targeted age groups about their taste in popular culture, seeking their opinions and trying to understand how that related to their sense of self. Although two main cohorts were interviewed, Hains acknowledges that the most successful interactions – and certainly from my perspective the most stimulating section of the book – were with girls in the eight to eleven age range, discussing their current taste in television programs. In her excellent methodology section on ‘Researching Girl Power with Girls’ (Chapter 5) she explains the limitations and advantages of this approach clearly. In the following chapters, she describes her observations in the playground, the audio recorded discussions she has with the girls and the video recordings they make with their dolls. This section is particularly eye-opening as one group of girls spontaneously tell a complex story of the underground railway and slavery with their Bratz dolls. Hains claims that the importance of feminist parenting emerged from the study (p. 263), but I disagree, having only seen a few clear examples of girls who had described their parents’ feminist beliefs and the subsequent influence on their own thinking. However, I support her other claims, which include effectively demonstrating a need for curriculumdriven pre-teen programming, the usefulness of engaging with children themselves in any study on children’s taste and interactions, and her finding that ‘girl power’ failed in many instances to empower individual girls in their embodied realities. Hains’ emphasis on the difference (race, socio-economic background, neighbourhood) between girls was useful, supporting feminist theorists such as bell hooks who have reminded feminists for many years of our divergent realities as well as our (sometimes) united aims. Ultimately, this text is a useful contribution to the fields of methodology in qualitative data collection, and cultural, feminist and gender studies – and, I am now convinced, ‘girl studies’ itself. — Emma Jean Kelly, Auckland University of Technology
NOHANZ Newsletter, 2021
National Oral History Association of NZ newsletter 2021
UK Oral History Journal, 2020
In 2020 Aotearoa New Zealand was in full level lockdown. Dr Emma-Jean Kelly led a project to coll... more In 2020 Aotearoa New Zealand was in full level lockdown. Dr Emma-Jean Kelly led a project to collect oral history online with the help of nine community oral historians using Zoom, Teams Video, Cell phones and any recording equipment they had at home. This project was the only one of its kind across the country at the time.
Labour History Project Bulletin, 2021
The Feisty Feckin' Full-time Feminists sing union songs - this is an article about the songs, the... more The Feisty Feckin' Full-time Feminists sing union songs - this is an article about the songs, their context and connection to historical events. This piece was written collectively by Claire-Louise McCurdy, Therese O'Connell, and Marie Russell. In fact I'm the most junior person in this collective and I don't claim to lead it in the slightest!
BackStory, 2020
Pauline Thompson was an Auckland based painter. This article discusses her life and her work, inc... more Pauline Thompson was an Auckland based painter. This article discusses her life and her work, including her Tahitian and Pitcairn Island heritage.
Ings is a Professor of Art & Design and a film maker
Article to accompany new broadcast on Jonathan Dennis by Gareth Watkins
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Papers by Emma-Jean Kelly
to trauma – or maybe they were just unlucky to inherit a tendency towards mental illness from their ancestors. This article uses material objects to trace something of a family history of colonisation and mental health.
to trauma – or maybe they were just unlucky to inherit a tendency towards mental illness from their ancestors. This article uses material objects to trace something of a family history of colonisation and mental health.
Writing family history in someone else’s country
Te Pouhere Kōrero challenge all of us in their tenth volume (BWB, March 2023) to listen harder, to pay more attention to iwi and hapū experience, ngā kōrero tuku iho, oral histories passed down. They also challenge us to think about who we are to tell the stories of others.
In thinking through my practice and my own genealogical (dis)connections to Aotearoa and Ireland, I accidently fell upon a silence in the telling of my diaspora history – I discovered an Irish immigrant Great Uncle had spent most of his life in Porirua Mental Asylum. Through an old travelling trunk returned to us by the owners of our old family farm at Pahiatua, a painful story emerged which helped my family today talk more openly about mental health and the history of our family members who had previously been labelled hypochondriacs, difficult, alcoholic, eccentric, or just plain embarrassing.
Through research on asylums in Aotearoa and also Irish history, we were able to contextualise my Great Uncle’s story, and our settler family’s experience. This presentation uses the article published from this experience of history in the real world to examine the implications for Pākehā learning their history in Aotearoa.