An English story

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1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s, 2000s, arts fellows, English, linguistics, writers

The English Department staff outside their premises in Cameron House, a grand two-storeyed family home on Leith Street (later knocked down to make way for UniCol), in 1961. Until tutorials were introduced, the department fitted into a small room in the Clocktower Building. From left: Keith Maslen, Lenore Harty, Gregor Cameron, Alan Horsman, Margaret Dalziel and Bob Robertson. Dalziel later became Otago’s first woman humanities professor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Image courtesy of the Department of English and Linguistics.

English is one of Otago’s founding subjects and has always been one of its most popular. In 1871 George Sale, the Cambridge-educated classics professor, taught an English class of 22, though it was an unfamiliar task for him. At his inaugural lecture Sale commented that neither Cambridge nor Oxford had a professor of English so he looked to the Scottish universities for inspiration; he concluded that their teaching encouraged ‘that very vice which it should be the especial object of a University to eradicate – shallowness and superficiality. He was therefore compelled to strike out a line for himself’. 1871 English students started the session with Chaucer, plunging straight into Middle English. When the class progressed to ‘the more modern language’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets after its ‘thorough and profitable perusal of the Canterbury Tales’, it earned a report in the ODT; perhaps the reporter was a student.

In 1881 Sale handed his English classes over to John Mainwaring Brown, another Cambridge graduate, appointed to a new chair of English, constitutional history (for law students) and political economy (economics). Brown was popular – and less intimidating than Sale – but his career ended tragically when he disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland at the end of 1888. With the arrival of Thomas Gilray in 1890, Otago had its first dedicated professor of English; a period of remarkable stability followed as the chair was held by just two men, both Scots, for three decades each.

Gilray was highly organised but not the most engaging lecturer: Muriel May, a student of the 1910s, recalled that he ‘taught by dictating at a relentless pace to his benches of scribbling students in the Lower Oliver classroom …. at the prearranged dates we regurgitated. There were no seminars, no discussions, originality was not fostered nor were personal opinions encouraged’. It didn’t help that he was bound by a national syllabus, with exam papers marked by strangers in the UK. Gilray’s death came as a shock: he collapsed while reading the lesson at the university’s jubilee church service, held in Knox Church in 1920. His successor, Herbert Ramsay, was ‘one of the university’s best lecturers’ and students delighted in his thoughts on Shakespeare. The course and teaching methods remained conservative. Ramsay boasted in a 1950 valedictory speech to the University Council that he never asked them for more staff. He and long-serving lecturer Gregor Cameron did all the teaching, with one additional junior lecturer from the late 1940s; they remained committed to the Scottish lecture-only system. John Greig, a Scot who taught in England, the US and South Africa, introduced radical changes as professor from 1952 to 1956. No fan of the conventional lecture, Greig introduced group tutorials; as a consequence, English’s academic staff jumped from three to seven, plus part-time tutors. He also modernised the curriculum, adding works by twentieth-century authors (Sean O’Casey, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf) and New Zealand poetry and short stories.

The inclusion of New Zealand literature in university courses was controversial. As Otago lecturer Robert Robertson explained, it was generally taught as ‘a dutiful recognition’ that first-year students should be aware of New Zealand poetry. There was an element of colonial cringe, but teaching local literature was hard work for staff, who had only ‘partial bibliographies, few collected works, no collected letters, not a standard biography, incomplete histories only and a scattered body of occasional criticism of varying merit’. Alan Horsman, a New Zealander who studied and taught in England, arrived as Otago’s new English professor in 1957. He recalls it as a significant year, with the publication of Janet Frame’s Owls Do Cry and Ian Cross’s The God Boy, novels which stood comparison with the best English writing; there was already poetry ‘of top quality’. He was reluctant, though, to introduce a paper devoted to New Zealand literature. Lawrence Jones, an American who arrived as lecturer in 1964, found Otago students responded more enthusiastically to Janet Frame than Thomas Hardy, and his research interests shifted to New Zealand literature. In 1977, in response to student demand, an honours paper fully devoted to New Zealand work was introduced; further undergrad courses followed and research expanded.

Burns Fellows received a year’s salary, a room in the English Department and complete freedom to write. Not all writers found the year easy, but others thrived during their first opportunity to write full-time. Cilla McQueen, the 1985 and 1986 Burns Fellow, is photographed in contemplative mood in the fellow’s office at the 50th anniversary celebrations of the fellowship in 2008. The office was then occupied by Sue Wootton. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.

Cross and Frame were both recipients of the university’s Robert Burns Fellowship for writers, commenced in 1959. In addition to providing some of the country’s greatest writers an opportunity to create without financial stress for a year, the fellowship was important for the English Department, which hosted the fellows. Staff and students interacted with them: ‘It was a very good thing for the department to have practising writers around, available to be talked with’, says Horsman. Some, like 1966 and 1967 Burns Fellow James K. Baxter, participated in classes. He ‘would come to a class occasionally and make his experience available. He would speak to the class about prosody in a way which, from a practising poet, was authoritative’, recalls Horsman.

Otago ventured into linguistics in the 1970s and in 1990 its small programme moved into the English Department; from 1994 students could major in linguistics. Another applied field which mushroomed in the 1990s was writing. It began when other departments expressed concern over students’ communication skills. In 1993 English introduced a paper on ‘the fundamentals of effective speaking and writing’; it was designed for health science students, for whom it was compulsory until 2006, but other departments at various times recommended or required it and other students also found it useful. It morphed into ‘English for university purposes’. Later the department expanded beyond the remedial or introductory with courses in advanced writing, writing for the professions and a creative writing paper in poetry.

Greg Waite (at centre, with beard), discussing the Textbase of Early Tudor English Project with participants at a conference in 1990. Waite and Alistair Fox started this early example of digital humanities in 1984, producing a machine-readable corpus of early Tudor literary texts, with particular focus on poetry. The project was largely completed by the late 1990s and transferred online in 2002. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.

Two new endowed chairs expanded the department in a Celtic direction. In 2006 Peter Kuch was appointed as Eamon Cleary Professor of Irish Studies and in 2009 Liam McIlvanney became Stuart Professor of Scottish Studies. Both are literary scholars (and McIlvanney has a sideline as a crime writer). They provided intellectual stimulation to an English Department already a mix of the old and the new: along with esteemed scholars of historic writers (for instance, Jane Austen expert Jocelyn Harris) it employed up-and-comers with interests in digital literature, post-colonial literature and the avant-garde, among other fields. Its writing programme was also a ‘sizeable operation’. Meanwhile, Middle English, Old English and Old Norse were still spake here. Rick McGregor, a 1992 PhD graduate, came from Auckland to research the use of Icelandic sagas by a modern Swedish writer because Old Norse remained on offer in the south; Otago’s blend of conservatism and innovation has distinct advantages!

Chaucer, the English Department’s first text, has never gone out of fashion. Giving a Chaucer reading at Colin Gibson’s retirement function in 1998 are, from left: Greg Waite, Nicola Cummins, Bill Dean and Colin Gibson. Image courtesy of the English and Linguistics Department.

Looking back at history

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1880s, 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, art history, economics, history, law, library, Maori, politics

Professor Angus Ross engaging another generation of potential history students at the Taieri High School breakup ceremony, 1965. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Taieri College archives, AG-629-015/060, S17-542a.

History has been around for a while! It first appeared at the University of Otago in 1881 when John Mainwaring Brown, the new professor of English, constitutional history and political economy, taught constitutional history to a class of two students. It was a subject designed for lawyers, covering ‘the development of the English Constitution, and of the Constitutional relations between the Mother Country and the Colonies’. The course, compulsory for the LLB degree, was also open to BA students. Mainwaring Brown’s career was cut tragically short when he disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland in December 1888. The university council recognised that it would be difficult to find somebody capable and willing to teach all of the subjects he had covered and appointed a new professor of English, with separate lecturers for constitutional history and political economy (economics). Alfred Barclay, one of Otago’s earliest graduates and a practising barrister, taught constitutional history for many years, except in the early years of the 20th century when the law school was closed and the subject wasn’t offered.

Harry Bedford, Otago’s first ‘English history’ lecturer. This photograph, taken by William Henshaw Clarke around 1902, was his official portrait as a Member of Parliament. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, General Assembly Library parliamentary portraits, 35mm-00168-f-F.

In 1914, history emerged as a subject in its own right with a new course in ‘English history’. It was taught by Harry Bedford, who had been Otago’s economics lecturer since 1907. Bedford had an impressive CV; he was a brilliant local graduate who started his working life in his father’s tailoring business, served a term in parliament, and practised law while lecturing at Otago. The syllabus for ‘English history’ included ‘a study of the outlines of the History of England, including the development of the constitution down to 1900’, with a more detailed study of a different period each academic year. Constitutional history continued as a separate course for law students, and Bedford also devoted two special lectures a week to ‘Modern History, as prescribed for Commerce students’ from 1916. Bedford was an inspiring teacher and his appointment to a new professorship in economics and history in 1915 came as no surprise. Sadly, he was another promising young professor destined for a tragic death; he drowned during a beach holiday in 1918. With the times still unsettled due to war, the council appointed Archdeacon Woodthorpe, the retired Selwyn warden, as acting professor. But they felt the time had now come to separate the growing disciplines of economics and history, and in 1920 John Elder of Aberdeen was appointed to a new chair in history, endowed by the Presbyterian Church.

Though the Presbyterians selected, appropriately enough, a ‘conservative and hard working Presbyterian’ from Scotland as Otago’s first history professor, Elder brought considerable innovation to the chair. He continued an extensive publishing career commenced in Scotland, producing both popular and academic works on New Zealand history at a time when ‘it was highly unusual for colonial professors to publish anything’. His developing interest in New Zealand’s history was also reflected in the curriculum, which expanded to include more coverage of this country and other colonies among the broad survey courses on offer. He valued archival research highly; this was made possible thanks to the resources held at the Hocken Library, and Elder required MA students to complete a thesis based on such sources. His dour manner didn’t endear him to students, though, and he soon put a stop to a young lecturer’s introduction of seminar discussions: ‘These young men like to hear themselves talk but you’re paid to lecture … So long as I’m head of this department, there’ll be no discussions’.

William Parker Morrell, photographed in 1930 while studying at Oxford. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Judith Morrell Nathan collection, ref: 1/2-197548-F.

In 1946 William Morrell – who featured in an earlier blog post on absent-minded professors – succeeded Elder as professor of history. He was a local graduate who studied and taught at Oxford and the University of London, and published widely on imperial and New Zealand history; he later took on the important role of writing the university’s centenary history! Morrell believed not only that history illuminated the present, but that the political state was worthy of study in its own right, and it was through his influence that politics joined the Otago syllabus, initially as part of the history department. Ted Olssen, an Adelaide graduate, was appointed to teach political science and classes commenced in 1948. Students emerging out of the war years and their clash of political ideologies demonstrated an appetite for the subject; it grew and became a separate department in 1967.

Like his predecessors, Willie Morrell believed that New Zealanders’ study of history needed to start with the histories of Britain and Europe, but an imperial framework meant that regions which had come under European control – including New Zealand and the Pacific – also appeared on the syllabus. Gordon Parsonson, who first joined the department as assistant lecturer in 1951 and remains an active researcher in his late 90s, was partly hired because of his interest and experience in Melanesia, acquired during World War II military service there. Angus Ross was another lecturer with expertise on New Zealand and Pacific history, though his distinguished war service had been in Europe. After many years in the department he succeeded Morrell as professor in 1965 and ‘steered the department away from the legacy of imperial history by making appointments trained to look at imperialism from the perspective of the colonised’. John Omer-Cooper, a specialist in African history, took up the newly-established second chair in history in 1973, while Hew McLeod, who became a world-renowned expert on Sikh history and culture, joined the department to teach Asian history in 1971. From 1975 a revamped curriculum gave students majoring in history broader choices; previously compelled to start with European history, they could now, if they wished, focus instead on New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific or Asian history.

Barbara Brookes and Ann Trotter at a Federation of University Women event at the Fortune Theatre, 1993. Image courtesy of Ann Trotter.

Under the umbrella of the histories of various regions, new themes began to emerge, often led by younger staff. Erik Olssen and Dorothy Page, both appointed in 1969 and both future heads of department, became pioneers of social history and women’s history respectively. Ross had a policy of appointing women where possible; although Morrell had also appointed a couple of women in the 1940s, men had long dominated the staff. The policy of recruiting good women academics continued and by the late 1980s they made up nearly half the department. In addition to Page, there were Barbara Brookes (another women’s history expert), Ann Trotter (who taught Asian history and subsequently became assistant-VC for humanities), Pacific historian Judy Bennett and long-serving lecturer Marjorie Maslen.

Angela Wanhalla and Judy Bennett in 2009. Photograph by Sue Lang, courtesy of the history and art history department.

As part of the new movement towards social history, Olssen embarked on the Caversham project, a long-running study of historic residents of southern Dunedin. Generations of honours and postgrad students mined the huge store of data for new insights into work, politics, gender, culture and society in New Zealand’s earliest industrial suburbs. Other new themes which became popular in the late 20^th century included environmental history and intellectual history (the history of ideas, incorporating science and religion), while world history provided an antidote to specialism in particular places and eras. A growing – if belated – awareness of the significance of Māori perspectives of history saw the appointment of Michael Reilly to a joint position in history and Māori studies in 1991. He later became full-time in Māori studies, but in the 21^st century the history department was fortunate to recruit two brilliant young Ngāi Tahu scholars, Angela Wanhalla and Michael Stevens.

History, like any other department, had its ups and downs through the years; funding was often tight and the trend towards lower enrolments in the humanities led to a loss of two staff in 2016. Art history joined the department in 2001, with a change in name to the history and art history department in 2008. Throughout, it remained a highly productive department with an excellent research record, ranking first in New Zealand for history and art history in the 2003 and 2006 PBRF rounds. It was no slouch in teaching either; in 2002, when OUSA gave its first teaching awards, history was the only department to have two people – Tom Brooking and Tony Ballantyne – in the top 10. As a proud graduate of Otago’s history department, I can testify to the great skills of its staff!

Recruiting a new generation of students, 2016-style. These secondary students, photographed at Toitū Otago Settlers Museum, were attending a ‘hands-on history’ course run by the university. Photograph by Jane McCabe, courtesy of the history and art history department.

 

The class of 1871

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1870s, classics, law, mathematics, mental science, teaching, theology

Robert Stout, future Premier of New Zealand, claimed the honour of being the University of Otago’s first student. This photograph was taken four years later, in 1875, by the NZ Photographic Co., Dunedin. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Box-030-001, S10-021a.

When classes commenced at the University of Otago in July 1871, the first student to sign on was a 26-year-old lawyer named Robert Stout, admitted to the bar just a few days previously. Though nobody knew it at the time, Otago’s first student was an omen of a good future: Stout became Premier of New Zealand and later Chief Justice. He arrived in Dunedin from his native Shetland in 1864 with teaching experience and surveying qualifications in hand; after a few years teaching he commenced legal training. The energetic Stout was well known around town for he was involved in numerous organisations and notorious as a leading freethinker, who loved debating against religious orthodoxies. His student career was not a long one and he did not complete a degree, but it had important consequences, for he was greatly influenced by the mental science professor, Duncan MacGregor, and later recruited him to become one of the country’s top public servants. Stout’s political career began in 1872, when he was elected to the Otago Provincial Council, but he still found time to serve as the university’s first law lecturer from 1873 until 1875, when election to parliament spelled the end of any academic career. However, his influence on New Zealand universities was immense. He was a member of Otago’s university council for several years and later that of Victoria College (now Victoria University of Wellington), of which he was ‘principal founder’; he also served on the senate of the University of New Zealand for 46 years and was its chancellor from 1903 to 1923.

Peter Seton Hay, the brilliant young mathematician who was one of New Zealand’s earliest graduates. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, P2010-011/1-024, Album 605, Hay family portraits, S16-683a.

 

The university attracted 81 students to its first session. Few student records survive – those identified from various sources are listed at the bottom of this post. Only 20 successfully passed their exams. The others presumably failed or abandoned their studies: ‘not a few dropped attendance, finding the task of preparation too burdensome’, noted council member Donald Stuart. Many, like Stout, were full-time workers and part-time students. Others may have had more time to devote to their studies, but found themselves ill-prepared for tertiary-level education; some did not have the privilege of a high school education. When the Evening Star in 1878 referred to maths and physics professor John Shand as ‘the lucky tenant of one of the University sinecures’, former student Gustav Hirsch rushed to his defence, noting Shand’s heavy workload and the success of his teaching: ‘One of his first students was taken from an elementary school at a very small place up-country, and had just managed to pick up a little mathematical knowledge from the mathematical volume of the “Circle of the Sciences”. Under Professor Shand’s guidance this student a few years afterwards graduated a first-class, with honors in mathematics, and is now an M.A.’ That student was Peter Seton Hay, who had migrated from Scotland as a child and grown up on the family farm at Kaihiku, in the Clutha district; he subsequently became a noted engineer, known particularly for the railway viaducts he designed. He was also famous for ‘prodigious mental calculations’ and ‘solved abstruse mathematical problems in his leisure hours’.

Hay was one of the few early students to complete a degree; most attended classes for a year or two, or even longer, but did not graduate. Otago’s first degree, a BA, was awarded to Alexander Watt Williamson in 1874; it then put aside its power to award degrees in favour of the University of New Zealand, which remained the country’s sole degree-granting body until 1961. Williamson was a young school teacher in the Whanganui district who came to Dunedin to attend the new university. At least one other foundation student came from the North Island, indicating Otago’s status as a national university from the start; Thomas Hutchison also hailed from Whanganui. Hutchison, just 16 years old, was destined for a career in the law and as a magistrate; lawyers and future lawyers were quite a feature among the founding students. Sitting alongside Stout in MacGregor’s mental science classes was 28-year-old William Downie Stewart, the lawyer who had trained Stout; meanwhile, another of Stewart’s law pupils, his future legal partner John Edward Denniston, attended Latin classes. Denniston, who was 26, had been a student at Glasgow University before migrating to New Zealand with his family in 1862; his father was a Southland runholder. Denniston later became a judge.

William Downie Stewart was one of several lawyers or future lawyers among the first students. He was called to the bar in 1867, and this photo was perhaps taken to mark that occasion. Stewart later served in the House of Representatives and Legislative Council. His son, William Downie Stewart junior, was also a well-known lawyer and politician. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, William Downie Stewart papers, MS-0985-057/073, S16-683d.

For several other founding students, the university was a step on the way to a career in the ministry. David Borrie of West Taieri, Charles Connor of Popotunoa, John Ferguson of Tokomairiro and John Steven of Kaitangata all studied at Otago before undertaking specialised theological training to become Presbyterian ministers. Ferguson and Steven were already school teachers, pupil teaching being a common route to ‘improvement’ for pupils who did well at school. Connor was just 15 when he signed on at the university. His father, the Presbyterian minister at Popotunoa (Clinton), wrote to the council to enquire if his son could undertake university education without a good grounding in Greek. The cash-strapped clergyman would, he noted, find it impossible to support his son in Dunedin for another full year at the high school, but could stretch to the shorter university session. Charles was ineligible for the university scholarships offered students for the Presbyterian ministry as he was under 16. Meanwhile, Ferguson was able to fund his studies thanks to his success in a competitive exam for the Knox Church Scholarship, worth £30 a year for three years. Connor managed to win a scholarship in his second year; this one was offered only to second-year students, suggesting it was tailored for him, the only candidate. Ferguson and Connor both later travelled ‘home’ for further study in Scotland, while Borrie and Steven completed their ministerial training locally. Thomas Cuddie was another founding student intent on a career in the ministry; sadly he died (probably of tuberculosis) just a couple of months after classes began.

Charles Connor was one of several future Presbyterian ministers among the founding students. His photograph sat alongside that of Peter Seton Hay in the Hay family album – they lived in the same country district. It is tempting to think these photos date from the time they began at the university, when Peter was about 18 years old and Charles just 15. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, P2010-011/1-025, Album 605, Hay family portraits, S16-683b.

These men were just the sort of people the university’s founders had in mind. They helped boost the ranks of well-educated teachers, lawyers and ministers, making the country less dependent on imported professionals. Most had arrived in the colony as children or young men and they and their parents had aspirations for a good education. Most might be described as middle class, but some were of humbler means. Thomas Cuddie, for instance, was the son of labouring parents with a struggling small farm at Saddle Hill; he was born aboard the Philip Laing, which brought some of the earliest colonial settlers to Otago in 1848. It would have been impossible for this pious but poor family to fund an education further away without substantial help. Some influential people believed the country would have been better to set up scholarships for New Zealanders to obtain a university education overseas rather than founding a local institution so early, but others were concerned about sending their young people far away and beyond the influence of family; furthermore, some of the most talented might not return. In any case, once a local university was a reality, it became the most accessible option.

Ferdinand Faithfull Begg – Ferdie to his family – photographed in the 1880s. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Album 398, p.17, Cargill family portraits, S16-683c.

There is some evidence of a ‘brain drain’ among the founding students. As would remain the case, some of the brightest were attracted to further study or other opportunities in Europe and not all returned. Peter Hay’s professors were keen to send him to Cambridge, notes one biography, but Hay ‘did not concur, having other than mathematical plans in which Cupid played a part’. For others of this migrant generation the ties to Otago and New Zealand were not so strong. Two went on to interesting careers in Britain. Cecil Yates Biss was born in India, where his grandfather was a Baptist missionary. He came to New Zealand in his teens with a brother and worked in various civil service jobs, including for the post office. After studying Latin and Greek at the University of Otago in 1871, Biss headed to Cambridge, where he completed the Natural Sciences Tripos with first class honours in 1875; he then qualified in medicine. He became a respected physician, researcher and lecturer in England, though his career was cut short by illness. He was also well known as a leading member of the Plymouth Brethren, and a colleague recalled that the non-smoking teetotaller was ‘rather given to admonishing his patients in regard to excesses and irregularities in living, in addition to ministering to their immediate ailments’.

Ferdinand Faithfull Begg was one of several businessmen among the founding students. He was the son of a prominent Edinburgh Presbyterian cleric. Begg joined his brother in Dunedin in 1863, acquiring good business skills in a bank and a large land agency. He performed well in the advanced maths class at the university in 1871 and returned to Scotland with his father, who had been out on a visit, the following year. There he became a prominent stockbroker, chairing the Edinburgh Stock Exchange and later the London Chamber of Commerce; he was also a member of parliament. One of Begg’s other claims to fame was to be ‘the first to ride a bicycle on the streets of Dunedin’; in 1871 he imported a ‘boneshaker’, complete with wooden wheels, brass pedals and iron tyres, backbone and handles.

There were no women among the founding students, but several joined classes the following year – I’ll feature the story of the admission of women in the next blog post!

University of Otago founding students – an incomplete list

From newspaper reports of exam passes:

• Begg, Ferdinand Faithfull
• Biss, Cecil Yates
• Borrie, David
• Cameron, J.C. [John Connelly?]
• Connor, Charles
• Denniston, John Edward
• Dick, Robert
• Duncan, James Wilson
• Dunn, John Dove
• Ferguson, John
• Fraser, J.M.
• Hay, Peter Seton
• Hirsch, Gustav
• Hutchison, Thomas
• Lusk, Thomas Hamlin
• Steven, John
• Stewart, William Downie
• Stout, Robert
• Wilding, Richard
• Williamson, Alexander Watt

Named in Williamson’s diary:

• Cuddie, Thomas Alexander Burns

Entered in university cash book paying fees:

• Allan, Alexander George
• Heeles, M.G. [Matthew Gawthorp?]
• Hislop
• Holder, H.R.
• Holmes, G.H. [George Henry?]
• Johnston
• Morrison
• Smith, F.R.
• Taylor, W.
• White, Clement

Wrote to secretary stating their intention to attend classes:

• Adam, Alexander
• Colee, Robert Alexander
• Hill, Walter
• McLeod, Alexander

I’d love to hear of any other 1871 students, or further details of those listed.

The absent-minded professor

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1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, anthropology, geology, history, home science

The absent-minded professor is not a mythical figure; numerous people have fitted this description through Otago’s history. I thought it would be fun to lighten the midwinter gloom with a few of the more entertaining stories of such characters. I must stress, however, that I have considerable sympathy for these people. It is all too easy for scholars to become caught up in the pursuit of their intellectual passions and lose track of the world around them!

Noel ‘Bennie’ Benson in characteristic pose, pointing out a feature of geological interest during a field trip in 1924. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, Department of Geology archives, MS-3195/132, S16-591b.

The most notorious absent-minded professor in Otago’s past is Noel Benson, who was geology professor from 1917 to 1950. Benson – known as ‘Bennie’ to generations of students – was an excellent geologist, who received one of the ultimate accolades in science, Fellowship of the Royal Society (London). He was a tall and somewhat shambling figure. John Mackie, a student of the 1920s and 1930s who went on to teach in the School of Mines and founded the surveying school, recalled that Benson ‘wore on all occasions an ancient, somewhat shapeless, dark tweed suit which bore the slightly green sheen of age’. At one point he acquired a new suit with two pairs of trousers, but it didn’t survive long. One day, as he assisted a student examining a map in a practical geology class, there was ‘a powerful smell of scorching’. The professor hadn’t noticed the heater under the table, and when he stepped back ‘the toasted fronts of his trouser legs fell out to reveal his pink long-johns’. A few weeks later, running late to meet a visiting scholar at the railway station, he tripped over the tram rails and fell, removing the knees from the second pair of pants. ‘Next day we saw a limping Bennie clad in the old familiar garb’.

Benson was not the best of lecturers, since he generally spoke with his eyes closed or facing the board, forgot to turn the lights on after showing slides or tripped over the projector cord, and often ran over time. As Mackie noted, ‘his thoughts were often far away on trilobites, or the structural features of the margin of Australasia, or the geology of eastern Otago, and if you spoke to him on such occasions he would reply automatically, “Yes – just so!”’. While he was courting his future wife – Helen Rawson, the home science professor – Benson became even more absent-minded than usual: as he lectured in the mining school he gazed ‘dreamily out the window to the home science building opposite’ and addressed ‘burly’ mining students as ‘my dear’, reported long-time physics lecturer Agnes Blackie. Helen Benson did her best to assist her husband in practical matters; for instance, she attached his compass, eraser and pencil to his button holes with string so he had less chance of losing them on field trips. But she couldn’t prevent some of his more famous lapses, such as the time he set off to work carrying his suitcase and the ashcan lid, carefully depositing his case at the front gate and taking the lid to the university.

Despite – or perhaps because of – his eccentricities, students regarded ‘Bennie’ with affection, and his knowledge and passion for geology inspired many. They were less fond of him when he drove them on field trips. John Mackie recalled ‘descending pale and shaken from his vehicle after being driven around winding roads in the bush, mostly on the wrong side, while he was peering at outcrops’.  Fred Fastier wrote that ‘One reason for an astonishing lack of collisions was that Benny kept his trafficator out “just in case” he might need to turn right. He would also get down to his lowest gear at least a mile away from the Mount Cargill Road lest he should forget to do so later on’.

Unfortunately, Benson was not the only absent-minded driver on the Otago staff. Another famous case was his contemporary Henry Devenish Skinner, the anthropology lecturer and museum director. Neil Howard recalled ‘one hair raising trip when driving out to Murdering Beach excavation site he went around the tortuous corners on the old Mt Cargill road on the wrong side, blowing the horn vigorously as he went. “Please excuse the horn,” says he, “you cannot be too careful”’. Another famous driving story relates to history professor William (‘Willie’) Morrell. His daughter Judith Nathan kindly shares the ‘best known story’ of the professor’s ‘legendary absentmindedness. He left my mother behind at the Vice Chancellor’s residence at St Leonard’s. He was taking the guest of honour home so the guest sat in the front and my mother in the back. As the back window was fogged up, she got out to clean it on the outside and he drove off. After a while the guest reportedly said: “Is your wife in the car?” to which my father is alleged to have replied: “Goodness me. I don’t believe she is.” At which point he turned the car around’. Despite such lapses, Morrell did pay attention to detail, as Neil Howard notes: ‘It was quite a performance when he would halt in a lecture, take out a propelling pencil, propel the lead, insert a comma in his lecture notes, ‘unpropel’ the pencil and replace it in his pocket then carry on’.

The future history professor during his own Otago student days, dressed as a schoolgirl for capping in 1920. From left: F.H. McDowall, G.A. Naylor, J.S. Adam, W.P. Morrell, L.S. Rogers and A.G. Crust. Image courtesy of Judith Morrell Nathan.

There were far fewer women academics back in the day and, since they had to overcome significant obstacles to achieve academic careers, they could not really afford to be absent-minded. Nevertheless, women professors stood out and eccentricity was not confined to the male of the species. Sticking to the transport theme, I don’t know if home science professor Ann Gilchrist Strong was a good driver, but her Model A Ford was a prized possession. 1920s student Sylvia Keane recalled that another of the professor’s prize possessions was her fox terrier Binkie, who had a basket in Strong’s office and ‘sported a bright scarlet coat in the winter’. It was ‘quite a memorable sight to see her sitting up beside Mrs Strong in the car’. The first home science professor, Winifred Boys-Smith, used a bicycle rather than a car. In contrast to the American Strong, Boys-Smith was ‘English to the backbone’, recalled Agnes Blackie, and ‘had a clear idea of the respect due to her position’. She was ‘a well-known figure as, clad in an ankle-length, black, caped waterproof coat and a broad-brimmed hat held securely in place with an enveloping motor-veil, she cycled from place to place round the university’.

Eccentricity and absent-mindedness do, of course, survive on campus to this day, but for obvious reasons I have confined these tales to people who have long since departed!

Economics – science, art or business?

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1870s, 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, accounting, economics, history, mathematics, mental science, statistics

Michael Cooper, professor of economics from 1976 to 1994, gives a lecture. Cooper, whose field of expertise was health economics, also held various senior management roles and chaired the Otago Area Health Board during his time at the university. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, 692.00119, S13-217i.

Economics is sometimes derided as the ‘dismal science’, but where does it fit in the taxonomy of academic subjects? Is it a science, an art, or a commercial subject? At Otago the answer has varied through the years. Political economy, as economics was officially termed here until 1916, was one of the founding disciplines of the university. That is hardly surprising for an institution established in a place where new theories of colonisation had been attempted in practice and where a large gold rush had recently occurred: economic theory was a visible force.

In the early days, with few staff, subjects had to be yoked together. Political economy came under the umbrella of mental science, which also covered mental and moral philosophy (or, as we now call them, psychology and philosophy). The first mental science professor, Duncan MacGregor, initially offered a course combining ethics and economics to senior students, but by the late 1870s political economy was a stand-alone course. From 1881 political economy became the responsibility of the new professor of English, John Mainwaring Brown. The calendar for 1882 reveals a course covering six topics: the nature and history of economic science; the production of wealth; the distribution of wealth; attempts to improve the present system of distribution; the exchange of wealth; and the economic functions of governments. After Mainwaring Brown disappeared during a tramping expedition in Fiordland in 1888, the university council decided his replacement as professor should be responsible for English alone, with political economy taught by a separate lecturer. Various lecturers followed, with gaps between appointments meaning economics wasn’t taught in some years; from 1895 to 1906 Frederick Gibbons, who had been Otago’s mathematics professor since 1886, also served as economics lecturer.

The next lecturer, the popular Harry Bedford, was one of Otago’s own graduates. Though still in his twenties he had an impressive CV: he had served a term in parliament, and practised law while lecturing at Otago. Initially appointed to economics, he later added history and law to his lecturing portfolio, and when the university created a new chair in economics and history in 1915 he became professor. Bedford was an inspiring teacher who also led classes for the Workers’ Educational Association; he was much mourned when he drowned in 1918. While an acting professor – Archdeacon Woodthorpe – was appointed, the university council felt the time had now come to separate the growing disciplines of economics and history. In 1920 – almost fifty years after first offering classes in political economy – Otago for the first time appointed a professor solely responsible for the teaching of economics.

Meanwhile, the growing university in 1913 arranged itself into faculties: arts/science, dentistry, home science, law/commerce, medicine and mines. Economics was part of the arts/science faculty, and when the arts and sciences split into separate faculties in 1944 it remained with the arts. Most students in economics in the first half of the twentieth century completed a BA degree, but there was also a growing group of commerce students. The BCom degree was introduced by the University of New Zealand, which awarded all degrees in this country, in 1905 and in 1912 Otago began teaching commerce subjects. Most students – and lecturers – were part-time and many were interested only in completing a professional qualification in accountancy, but for those who wanted to complete the full commerce degree course, economics was compulsory.

There was clearly considerable cooperation between the arts and commerce faculties in arranging economics courses to suit all students. In 1920, for instance, ‘the principles of economics’ offered ‘a general introduction to the subject’, covering ‘production, exchange, distribution, and consumption of wealth; the economic functions of government; the elementary principles of taxation’. This was a course designed for the commercial accountants’ exam. The ‘pass degree’ course covered similar material but with ‘more detailed study of prices, money, and banking, and elementary trade’. Other courses available for honours and bachelors’ degrees included ‘advanced economics’, ‘currency and banking’, ‘logical and statistical methods’, ‘economic history of England’ and ‘economic geography’.

The wide range of courses offered set a challenge for the economics staff, but this didn’t prevent an enviable level of research, publication and public engagement. One of New Zealand’s earliest PhDs was earned in Otago’s economics department by Walter Boraman in 1929; he researched the history of public finance in New Zealand. In the early 1930s Professor Allan Fisher and lecturer Geoffry Billing (who became professor himself in 1947) both studied abroad thanks to Rockefeller Fellowships, with Fisher also taking a year’s leave to act as economic advisor to the Bank of New South Wales. Student numbers remained small, but started to grow rapidly, like the rest of the university, in the 1960s; the stage one class had to be split in 1970.

In 1952 Professor Billing, previously dean of the arts faculty, became dean of the commerce faculty. Economics was now part of both these faculties, though it continued to be administered through the arts faculty. Billing raised the possibility of a new combined faculty of economics and commerce, but nothing came of the suggestion at that time. Tom Cowan, the accountancy professor who succeeded Billing as commerce dean in 1960, wrote much later that ‘there was some fear of dominance by Economics, as indeed happened in some universities overseas’. Cowan, too, advocated a closer relationship: ‘With my own background in Economic studies, I am convinced that tendencies within New Zealand universities for Economics departments to distance themselves from Commerce departments have been contrary to the national interest’. There was a need, he suggested, ‘to bridge a gap that seems to disregard the common ground and interdependence of economic and business studies’.

In 1989 the University of Otago was restructured into the four academic divisions which survive to this day: health sciences, sciences, humanities and commerce (also known as the school of business). Over the preceding decade the number of commerce students had risen rapidly, from around 10% of Otago student enrolments to over 20%; by 1988 about three-quarters of economics majors were working towards commerce rather than arts degrees. Given a choice between the humanities and commerce divisions, the economics department chose to go with commerce. This was a sad loss to the humanities, but a real boon to commerce, which now gained the full commitment of one of the university’s oldest disciplines. The fine scholarly record of the economics department proved critical to the division as research funding became ever more important; some of the other commerce disciplines did not have strong research traditions and economics gave the business school more credit with other scholars and, more importantly, with funders. Economics remained a subject available for both arts and commerce degrees; from 1999 it was also available as part of the philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) major for a BA. But economics also had a wider reach, appearing on the BSc schedule from 2002 as part of a major in economics and statistics, and from 2012 as a major on its own.

The issue of where economics fits as a discipline is a subject of considerable philosophical debate. At Otago, the answer is that it is an art, a science and a business! For over a century it was under the rule of the arts, but in the 1980s commerce took over. Throughout, it has been a popular subject with a strong research record. Do you have any memories to share of the ‘dismal science’ at Otago?

Among the brightest and the best

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1900s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, anthropology, botany, economics, geology, law, medicine, physics, Rhodes, scholarships, sports, vice-chancellors, women

James Allan Thomson, New Zealand’s first Rhodes Scholar, as he appeared in the Auckland Weekly News, 7 July 1904. Image courtesy of Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries, AWNS-19040707-7-2.

The Rhodes Scholarship – one of the most prestigious academic awards in the world – has shaped the lives of some of Otago’s most gifted graduates. The scholarship, which provides for study at Oxford University, has been awarded since 1902 thanks to a generous bequest from Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes, an English clergyman’s son and Oxford alumnus, made his fortune as a mining magnate in southern Africa. He was an ardent promoter of the British Empire and played a large hand in African politics as Prime Minister of Cape Colony in the 1890s. His business ethics and racial views seem highly suspect today, but the purpose of the scholarship he founded – to promote peace and civic leadership by bringing together young people from the British colonies, Germany and the USA to further their education – remains admirable. The scholarships provide tuition and living costs for two or three years of study at Oxford; they are awarded to young people who demonstrate a combination of intellect, moral character, leadership, physical vigour, and an unselfishness which will lead to a commitment to public service.

There have now been 219 Rhodes Scholars from New Zealand. This country was generally allocated one scholarship per year from 1904, with two per year from 1926 until 1993, when the allocation was increased to three. Otago has a proud record of producing 61 of New Zealand’s Rhodes Scholars, and for some years now has been neck-and-neck with the much larger University of Auckland for first place honours. Rhodes Scholars are, by definition, outstanding people. All have interesting stories and it is not possible to recount them all here. Some feature in items produced to celebrate the centenary of the scholarship, including an Otago Magazine article and an exhibition at the University of Otago Library Special Collections.

Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first Rhodes Scholar was a geologist, Allan Thomson. He taught at Oxford and worked in Australia before returning to New Zealand, where he was a palaeontologist with the Geological Survey before becoming director of the Dominion Museum. He made major contributions to the organisation of science in this country before his life was sadly cut short by tuberculosis (his initial diagnosis prevented him from taking up a position on Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica).

A considerable number of Otago Rhodes Scholars continued their careers beyond these shores. For example, there were several from the 1930s – when there were fewer scholarly opportunities in New Zealand – who became well known: doctor and Olympic champion Jack Lovelock (1931), journalist and war correspondent Geoffrey Cox (1932), Oxford English professor Norman Davis (1934), and writer and publisher Dan Davin (1936). Quite a few, like Davis, continued their academic careers at Oxford and other overseas universities.

Arthur Porritt in 1923, the year he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, S P Andrew Ltd :Portrait negatives. Ref: 1/1-018584-F.

Other scholars brought their overseas experience back to New Zealand. Where leadership is concerned, the best known is Arthur Porritt (1923).  At Oxford he completed the medical studies begun at Otago and went on to a stellar surgical career in England, becoming president of the Royal College of Surgeons and British Medical Association. He was also a stellar athlete; his bronze-medal win at the 1924 Paris Olympics was represented by the fictional Tom Watson in the film Chariots of Fire. From 1967 to 1972 Porritt returned to New Zealand and served as the first locally-born Governor General.

Sir Arthur and Lady Porritt in vice-regal splendour for the opening of parliament in 1968. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Further negatives of the Evening Post newspaper. Ref: EP/1968/2679/6A-F.

Some Otago Rhodes Scholars returned to their alma mater and took up significant leadership roles. Hubert Ryburn (1921) was a mathematics scholar and Presbyterian minister; he sat on the University Council from 1946 and served as Chancellor from 1955 to 1970. Otago managed to entice another former Rhodes Scholar, Robert Aitken (1924), back to New Zealand to serve as its first full-time administrative head in 1948. Aitken left his position as Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Aberdeen to become Otago’s vice-chancellor; he left in 1953 for a position as vice-chancellor at Birmingham. A more recent vice-chancellor, David Skegg, was also a Rhodes Scholar (1972). Skegg, who graduated top of his class at the Otago Medical School, relished the opportunity to study at Oxford with distinguished medical epidemiologist Richard Doll. In 1980, at just 32 years, Skegg returned to Otago as Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine, skilfully leading that department until 2004, when he became a popular vice-chancellor. He left that role in 2011, but continues as a highly respected research professor to this day.

David Skegg outside the Bodleian Library at the time of his graduation with an Oxford D Phil. Image courtesy of David Skegg.

Others also returned to Otago, sometimes briefly, and sometimes to make a career. A couple of recent examples are Jesse Wall (2008), now on the law faculty staff, and bioethicist Tom Douglas (2003), who remains at Oxford but visited last year to foster research links with Otago staff.

Athletes Porritt and Lovelock weren’t the only famous sportsmen on Otago’s Rhodes list, which also features two All Black captains, Chris Laidlaw (1968) and David Kirk (1985). For Kirk, like some others, the scholarship provided an opportunity to branch out from his original field of study. He was a medical graduate, but studied PPE (politics, philosophy, economics) at Oxford, returning to a career in politics, then business, in New Zealand and Australia. For Kirk, Oxford also provided a welcome respite from his celebrity status in New Zealand as Rugby World Cup-winning captain.

Cecil Rhodes’s will limited the scholarship to men. By the 1960s this had become a sore point, and from 1968 to 2000 Rhodes Visiting Fellowships were awarded so women who had already embarked on academic careers could also benefit from time at Oxford. Only 32 of these fellowships were awarded, so it is remarkable that 11 went to New Zealand women, two of them from Otago: archaeologist Helen Leach (1980) and lawyer Mindy Chen-Wishart (1992). In 1977 an Act of Parliament overturned the gender restriction and made the original scholarships open to women. Otago’s first woman Rhodes Scholar was law student Christine French (1981); since then women have accounted for just over half of the Otago recipients. The Rhodes Project, established by one of the first American women Rhodes Scholars to promote public understanding of female achievement, provides information about some of the Rhodes Scholar women and their subsequent careers.

Though Otago’s first Rhodes Scholar was a scientist, the list is dominated by arts, law and medical students; the most recent Otago science student to win a Rhodes was Jane Larkindale (1996), who majored in plant biotechnology and physics and is now a research scientist in the USA. Commerce students are even rarer, though Louis Chambers (2013) was a student of economics as well as law. Talented commerce and science students of today might like to consider this a challenge!

Educating social workers

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1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, community studies, consumer and applied sciences, family studies, gender studies, home science, Invercargill, social work, sociology, university extension

Social work students working through a scenario in their practice suite, 2010. Photo courtesy of the Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work.

Because much social work provision comes out of the community sector, the formal education of social workers has been debated vigorously over the years. Otago’s first venture into this field came in 1959, when it offered short courses for social workers at the request of the recently-formed Otago Association of Social Workers and its Southland counterpart. Staff from New Zealand’s first tertiary social work course, which began at Victoria University of Wellington in 1950, visited Dunedin and Invercargill to lead these seminars. Otago’s university extension department continued to offer seminars and lecture courses for social workers through the 1960s, varying topics from year to year so returning students could obtain broad coverage of the discipline.

In the early 1970s the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine proposed a one-year diploma course in medical social work, but this never eventuated because of a lack of support from social workers, probably concerned that the course was too narrow and, worse, controlled by the powerful medical profession. Meanwhile, other professional social work courses got off the ground at Massey, Canterbury and Auckland. Otago decided to carry on with social work education through its extension service. In 1974 a new two-year part-time course for a Certificate in Theory and Practice of Social Work began. Local social welfare agencies provided support for the course, with the ‘work which over-burdened social workers are prepared to undertake to assist the University … a mark of the very great need that they see to have educational and training facilities in social work in the southern part of New Zealand upgraded’. In 1976 Patrick Shannon – destined for a long career at Otago – took on the Department of University Extension’s new role of Lecturer in Social and Community Studies, becoming responsible for the social work course. The course was ‘not a professional qualification’ and received no accreditation from the New Zealand Social Work Training Council, but had ‘a recognised place and value in the education of social workers, and provides a base for entry to further study’. It was popular and enrolments had to be limited.

Meanwhile, there were related developments in the Faculty of Home Science. The faculty had always kept its main focus on the sciences, but there was an element of the social as well. In 1977 the long-standing paper in ‘home management’ became ‘management for family living’ and in 1981 ‘family studies’, incorporating teaching on ‘the inter-relationship of the family and the community’ and ‘community health and welfare’. In 1987 David Buisson, the new dean, created a Community and Family Studies Development Unit ‘to give the impetus for developments in the social science and social policy areas’ in his restructuring of what now became the Faculty of Consumer and Applied Sciences. Over the next two years stage two and three courses in community and family studies replaced the old one-level family studies. The new curriculum covered ‘families in society’, ‘family resource management’, ‘crises in family and community development’ and ‘consumer issues’.

There were obvious common areas of interest between the new unit and the Department of University Extension’s Community Studies Centre. Late in 1988 they merged, bringing the popular Certificate in Social Work into the ambit of Consumer and Applied Sciences. In 1990, majors were introduced to the Bachelor of Consumer and Applied Sciences degree and students could now major in community and family studies. Other curriculum changes offered increasing options for those with an interest in social work. In 1993 the old certificate course evolved into the Diploma in Social and Community Work and in 1994 a new Postgraduate Diploma in Social Services was developed for those who had majored in community and family studies (or had equivalent qualifications or experience); both courses included fieldwork in addition to their theoretical component.

In 2001 community and family studies became an independent department and moved to the humanities division. The new department received a boost a couple of years later when its two social work programmes were the first to be approved under the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers’ new certification process. ‘We got incredibly good ratings and there was nothing that had to be improved’, commented Raylee Kane, the Director of Professional Programmes; ‘we’ve set the benchmark and it’s really high’. A variety of new postgraduate programmes – mostly available part-time by distance teaching – added new options. A university review of the department in 2003 particularly commended both Kane and the long-serving head of social work, Pat Shannon, a ‘dedicated and exemplary’ leader. From 2005 a new name – the Department of Social Work and Community Development – reflected better its work, while the 2007 appointment of Amanda Barusch as the university’s first professor of social work boosted its research focus.

The introduction of social worker registration in 2003 presented challenges to Otago’s programmes. Registration was voluntary but some employers required it; clearly qualifications needed to fit into the new framework. In 2007 Otago commenced a new four-year undergraduate qualification, the Bachelor of Social and Community Work (from 2011 the Bachelor of Social Work), to fit the Social Workers Registration Board’s minimum requirement of a bachelor-level degree. Two years of ‘pre-professional’ study was followed by two years of professional education. Registration requirements saw the downfall of the old undergraduate diploma, along with another popular Otago qualification, the Postgraduate Diploma in Social and Community Work.

Shayne Walker teaching students on a block course, 2010. Photo courtesy of the Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work.

In 2011 the department merged with two other small social science programmes to create the new Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work – it has been a happy alliance thanks to excellent leadership and motivated staff. Indeed, through all its changes Otago’s social work programme has been fortunate to attract inspirational staff, frequently retaining them for long careers. In addition to helping shape future generations of social workers, staff have played important roles in advising government, and others, on social policy. Their commitment is epitomised in Shayne Walker, whose journey took him from being a child in care to a youth worker and foster parent dedicated to improving the lives of young Maori, long-time lecturer in social work, and now Chair of the Social Workers Registration Board.

Do you have any stories to share of Otago’s social worker education? I’d love to hear some personal anecdotes!

From Italian to Arabic

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1870s, 1910s, 1930s, 1960s, 1990s, 2000s, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, languages, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, war

The language laboratory, once a familiar venue to every language student, in 1990. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit records, MS-4185/030, S15-500c.

Various modern languages have come and gone from the Otago curriculum over the years and their fortunes show a fascinating link with world geopolitics. While Latin and Greek were there from the beginning, modern languages started in 1875, with classes in German, French and Italian. Italian didn’t make it far – there was just one student in that first class and it was never repeated! French and German had the advantage through the years of being taught widely at high schools, always an important factor in recruiting students at university level. They were also useful for anybody with scholarly interests, since much scholarly publishing, from sciences to theology, was in German or French until English became more dominant in the mid-twentieth century. This was one of the rationales for compulsory languages in all university degrees.

Apart from a two-year suspension in the 1870s while the university sought a replacement lecturer, French has remained on the Otago syllabus throughout, but the German programme became a victim of World War I. Early in 1915 Frank Campbell, the German lecturer, had no choice but to resign, for he had no students; Otago students in the grip of patriotic fervour were not prepared to learn the language of their enemy. The university council regretted ‘the removal, even for a time, of so important a study as that of German from the subjects of instruction within the University.’ German classes commenced again in 1918, catering for science students who now had to demonstrate a reading knowledge of foreign languages to complete their degree.

The German programme slowly rebuilt and was boosted by the arrival of new lecturer Felix Grayeff in 1939. By contrast with World War I, German classes actually expanded during World War II. New Zealand society had obviously matured a little, and it presumably helped, also, that Grayeff was a Prussian Jew who might earn some sympathy from the most patriotic supporter of the allied cause. He was a classicist who had difficulty obtaining teaching work in Germany due to his religion.

Geopolitics also played a role in the next major development in languages at Otago, as the prolonged Cold War heightened local interest in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; this coincided with an increase in scientific publications in Russian. In 1960 the Department of Modern Languages began offering Russian tutorials as an option for those who had to pass a compulsory foreign language reading test, and a year later a degree programme in Russian commenced. In 1969 the expanding Department of Modern Languages divided into three: the German, French and Russian departments.

New Zealand’s growing economic, diplomatic and cultural ties with Asia prompted the next additions to the language programme. A 1991 working party set up by vice-chancellor Robin Irvine reported that Asian studies were critical to the future of both university and nation. Though Otago offered papers relating to Asia in various departments, there were no Asian languages taught. Other than Lincoln, all other New Zealand universities had Asian language programmes, and Otago ‘would find itself at a steadily worsening competitive disadvantage if corrective measures are not taken urgently.’ Undergraduate language courses in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese commenced in 1993, with classes of 26 and 132 respectively. The greater popularity of Japanese reflected New Zealand’s closer trade and tourism ties with that country than with Chinese-speaking nations in that period, together with the widespread teaching of Japanese in secondary schools.

Despite the encouraging introduction of Japanese and Chinese, the 1990s was a troubled decade for Otago’s language programmes. Tighter funding, closely linked to student enrolments, placed small departments like those of the languages in jeopardy. Russian, which had evolved from the Department of Russian and Soviet Studies into the the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was the smallest department in the humanities with very few students and large budget blowouts; it closed at the end of 1997. This prompted wide protests, for the department, renowned for its eccentricity, was held in much affection around the university. The closure reflected a declining local interest in things Russian as world politics evolved – as one-time lecturer Peter Stupples comments, Russian ‘came in because of politics and went out because of politics’.

Meanwhile, a 1997 report noted that Spanish was ‘important as a Pacific Rim language. South and Central America are likely to become of greater significance to the future of New Zealand, both commercially and culturally, in the coming decade.’ Otago was developing exchange agreements with universities in Chile and Peru, short courses in Spanish were proving popular at Otago Polytechnic, and Auckland and several Australian universities had introduced very successful Spanish programmes. Otago commenced Spanish courses in 2001 and they proved popular from the very start, attracting 340 students to the first paper offered. By 2003 there were 394 students enrolled in undergraduate Spanish papers, making it the most popular language on offer (te reo Maori excluded – for the history of Maori language teaching at Otago, see this earlier post).

The success of the Spanish programme prompted Otago into a new language venture: in 2003 it became the only New Zealand university to offer teaching in Portuguese. This was a strategic decision to strengthen the university’s Latin American and European offerings and aid its exchange programmes with two Brazilian universities. Classes carried on for a few years, but did not attract sufficient interest to survive.

The most recent language added to the schedule reflects New Zealand’s growing involvement with the Middle East. Introductory Arabic language was first taught as a Summer School paper in 2005, following requests from students. This was a convenient way for the university to introduce a new language, since it could be taught, like many Summer School papers, by a visiting lecturer. Arabic has since appeared several times on the Summer School programme, attracting both local and international students. It has not, however, progressed beyond first-year level.

Otago’s Department of Languages and Cultures, created in 2003 by combining the departments of French and German and the other language programmes, now teaches five core languages at both undergraduate and postgraduate level – Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish. I wonder where our ever-changing world will lead us next!

The German play, a popular annual event since 1954. This production was in 2002. Image courtesy of Alyth Grant.

Maori Studies celebrates

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1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Maori, university extension

Maori Studies staff in 1991. Standing (from left): Mark Laws, Maureen Bruce, Godfrey Pohatu, Meredith ?, Michael Reilly, Mereana Smith. Seated: Lorraine Johnson, Toroa Pohatu. They are photographed at the Mataatua wharenui at Otago Museum, often used for Maori Studies events prior to its return to Ngati Awa in Whakatane in 1996. Image courtesy of the Hocken Collections, University of Otago Photographic Unit records, MS-4185/016, S14-561a.

Maori Studies was slow to get started at Otago, but once underway it grew rapidly and became a key part of the university. This month – 27 March to be precise – marks 25 years since Maori Studies officially became a full university department and in May it will celebrate this anniversary in style.

As I described in a previous post, the Department of University Extension began community classes in te reo Maori in 1957. These classes proved popular and expanded over the years; a considerable number of those involved were students, who did not have any options for including te reo Maori in an Otago degree. It was demand from students that finally got the university talking about offering Maori as an undergraduate course.

In 1971 the Faculty of Arts set up a committee “to examine the case for establishing courses in Maori”. After consulting widely, the committee recommended in 1972 that Otago should establish a Maori programme: after all, studying the language was “both an opportunity and a responsibility for all New Zealand universities” and there was “a genuine and wide interest” in such a course from students. The faculty approved in principle, but promptly shelved further action until 1975, when the next government five-yearly funding block grant began.

The committee believed it was important that “the first member of staff appointed in Maori be of very high academic quality and that the appointment be made at the level of senior lecturer at least.” The focus on academic qualifications had unfortunate consequences. In June 1975 the academic staffing committee decided that neither of the two applicants for the position was suitable. Conscious that Maori language teachers with higher academic qualifications were rare and in hot demand as Maori courses expanded all over the country, the staffing committee took an alternative approach. Ray Harlow, who had a PhD and had already lectured in the Department of Classics, was an able linguist who currently taught in Germany and planned to study Polynesian languages and literature at the University of Munich. Otago offered him a post-doctoral fellowship to study for a year in Germany, followed by a year at the University of Auckland, studying Maori with Prof Bruce Biggs. After his two years of study was complete, they expected to offer him a position lecturing in Maori.

Unsurprisingly, the news that Otago’s first Maori lecturer was to be a Pakeha who had, as yet, a limited knowledge of te reo, caused a public outcry, with letters appearing in the press around the country.The delay of another two years was also a frustration for those campaigning for a Maori course. The university Maori Club – one of the original advocates for an undergraduate course – was particularly critical of the delay and of the appointment of a person without standing within the Maori community, but it was not alone. Over a thousand people signed a petition protesting that the course would no longer commence in 1976. The university also received a delegation of the Maori Graduates Association, consisting of a high-powered group of Maori academics, professionals and students.

In a concession to Maori concerns the university brought forward its original intention to appoint a second lecturer; this time it hoped to attract “a suitably qualified native-speaker of Maori” and the Maori Graduates Association agreed to encourage applications. However, finding somebody proved difficult. In 1979 the Dean of Arts reported that the position had been offered to three people over the past four years but all had declined; Otago still had no undergraduate course in Maori.

Harlow returned to Otago in 1977 and taught linguistics. In 1980 the Faculty of Arts decided it could delay no longer. Having failed to find another suitable lecturer, it introduced a half-unit in Maori language for beginners in 1981, taught by Harlow. This was “an interim measure pending the introduction of a full unit in Maori when a native-speaking lecturer can be appointed.” It’s important to note that nobody had any personal objection to Harlow. When he left for a position as lecturer in Maori Studies at Waikato at the end of 1989 the Maori Centre newsletter noted he had been “an ardent supporter of nga mea Maori generally on campus and at the multitribal Arai-te-Uru Marae.” He was also an able linguist, recognised in his appointment to Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Maori, the Maori Language Commission.

So, the Maori programme finally got underway in 1981, with the class limited to 32 students for the first four years. A new phase of development began with the arrival of Godfrey Pohatu as lecturer in 1986. After ten years of trying the university had finally found its first Maori lecturer of Maori. Pohatu was an experienced teacher who was part-way through a Master of Education degree at Canterbury; he went on to complete a PhD at Otago in 1998. He was also very active in Maori cultural groups and became a well-known composer of waiata. After all the years of delay there were big expectations of Pohatu; he was fortunate to have great support from his wife, Toroa, who was also an experienced teacher and cultural performer, fluent in te reo Maori.

Toroa Pohatu joined her husband as a lecturer in the Maori programme in 1988. The additional staffing was much needed, for the number of students grew rapidly; there were 212 first-years to be taught that year. A cultural paper – introducing basic cultural concepts, mythology, arts and crafts – was added to the language paper in 1987, meaning students could now complete a full stage one unit in Maori. The same year saw the birth of Te Kapa Haka o Te Whare Wananga o Otakou, a Maori cultural group tutored by the Pohatus which had considerable success at Maori performing arts festivals. The Maoritanga paper quickly proved popular with a wide range of students seeking a basic understanding of the Maori world, and it remains one of Otago’s largest papers. Stage 2 papers started in 1989 and in 1990, with the arrival of Stage 3 papers, it became possible to major in Maori Studies.

At Auckland, Massey, Victoria and Canterbury universities, Maori studies commenced within anthropology departments. At Otago, though anthropology was a department where Maori students felt particularly welcomed, the subject of Maori studies had a different path. Rather than being attached to a particular department, Maori started out as a ‘section’ within the arts faculty, directly responsible to the dean of arts and with an advisory committee of the faculty. This allowed it to develop independently and rapidly, but not entirely unsupported. In 1990 – the year when Stage 3 papers were first offered and Otago’s first Maori studies majors completed their degrees – it gained formal recognition as an independent university department.

After these long and tricky beginnings, 1990 was clearly a major milestone for Maori Studies at Otago – something worth celebrating in 2015! The department – which evolved into Te Tumu, the School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies – has had various ups and downs since 1990, but enters its second quarter-century in a flourishing state with many great achievements behind it. Do you have any memories to share of the early years of Maori Studies at Otago?

The gift of music

Tags

1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1970s, benefactors, music

John Blair, the Dunedin seed merchant whose generous legacy allowed the music department to get started. Image from the Cyclopedia of New Zealand: Otago & Southland Provincial Districts (Christchurch: Cyclopedia Company, 1905), courtesy of the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand Licence

Turnips and opera may seem an unlikely pairing, but at Otago the former eventually led to the latter! Turnips were one of the specialties of Dunedin seed merchants Nimmo and Blair, regular winners of prizes at agricultural and pastoral shows around Otago in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. John Blair, one of the owners, was a Scotsman drawn to the colonies by the lure of gold. After some years in Victoria he arrived in Otago in 1862, attracted by the new rush to the Dunstan. When he failed to make a fortune on the goldfields, Blair settled in Dunedin, finding work with a seed merchant. Blair proved a better businessman than he was a miner. With partner Robert Nimmo he purchased his late employer’s firm in 1876, and Nimmo and Blair quickly flourished as growers and suppliers of seeds, also branching out to sell fertilisers and agricultural implements. When he died in 1913 Blair was a man of considerable means, leaving money to his family and to various charitable causes, especially those connected with religion and education in the south.

Blair had a great fondness for music and in 1925 the University Council learned from his trustees that he had bequeathed funds to pay for a music lecturer at Otago (the delay after his death was presumably to allow various life interests and annuities in his estate to be completed). With funds for a lecturer’s salary guaranteed, the university was happy to expand its academic offerings to include the study of music; it was already supporting more informal adult education classes in music appreciation through the Workers’ Educational Association.

The council advertised for a lecturer, but did not have to look far to find a perfectly qualified candidate. Victor Galway, who was organist at First Church, conductor of the Dunedin Choral Society and its orchestra, a private music teacher, and the WEA lecturer, started work as the University of Otago’s first music lecturer in 1926. Galway, then in his early thirties, had excellent academic credentials in addition to practical experience, for he was the University of Melbourne’s first doctoral graduate in music (he was born in England but migrated to Australia with his family in his teens).

The University of Otago’s first music lecturer, Victor Galway, photographed in 1931. Image courtesy of the Alexander Turnbull Library, New Zealand Free Lance collection, reference PAColl-6303-32.

The music department had small beginnings, with just 12 students in its first year. Early courses on offer included harmony, counterpoint, musical appreciation and history, and – for advanced students – composition and orchestration. The actual performance of music would not become part of the curriculum until much later, though staff and students of the department took part in many musical activities outside their classes.

Otago was late getting off the ground with music – Auckland University College had a music lecturer from 1888 and Canterbury from 1891 – but its programme grew steadily. Victor Galway, who was promoted to professor in 1939, reflected in 1949 on the department’s first 25 years. There were now 185 students, including 45 studying for the specialist Bachelor of Music degree. Galway took pride in the achievements of those he had taught, particularly those who had gone on to influential positions in education: “The Professor of Music in Canterbury University College and both of the lecturers in Music there are students of mine and graduates of this University, as is also the lecturer in Music in Otago [Mary Martin, who had graduated MusB in 1930 and was appointed lecturer in 1939]. The Departments of Music in the Dunedin Technical High School, the Christchurch Technical College, the Papanui Road Technical College as well as in many other post primary schools in New Zealand are staffed by men and women trained at the University of Otago. Others of our graduates hold leading positions in the National Broadcasting Service, as Church Organists, and as performers and teachers throughout New Zealand.”

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Honor McKellar, who was a student in the department in the early 1940s. She remembers the music staff of two – Galway and Martin – being squeezed into a small office shared with the German department in the clocktower building. Among the half dozen or so other students majoring in music then were John Ritchie (who became Professor of Music at Canterbury and a noted composer) and Walter Metcalf (who studied both science and music and ended up with an academic career in chemistry). Metcalf was a good violinist who led the university orchestra, while McKellar played “about fourteenth violin.” She describes herself as “dispensable” to the orchestra – when somebody in a front row broke a string she passed her violin forward and retired from the concert!

Honor McKellar’s great talent was in singing, and Prof Galway called on her to illustrate the public lectures he often gave. He was a popular lecturer, well-known for swinging his watch chain as he walked from side to side across the stage. He was a good teacher, she recalls, and gave them a thorough technical training; she could “write a fugue backwards”. He was, though, very conservative in his musical tastes, and famously described nineteenth-century opera as “the lowest form of art”. Seventeenth-century composer Purcell was more to his taste, and in 1941 he led the Otago University Musical Society in a concert performance of the Purcell opera Dido and Aeneas. Galway’s successors as Professor of Music, Peter Platt and then John Drummond, were opera enthusiasts who developed this aspect of the department’s work greatly.

The seed merchant’s legacy – still commemorated through the Blair Professorship in Music – clearly had quite an impact on Otago. As well as the lectureship, his bequest funded scholarships for many music and arts students until the 1970s, when the money was redirected into the newly-established Mozart Fellowship for composers. Other music lovers later followed his example and contributed financially to the department’s activities; most notably, a large bequest from Dunedin physician William Evans funded a travelling scholarship and lecturers in music performance. Honor McKellar returned to Otago as its first executant lecturer in 1971; performance was offered as a degree subject from 1966, but tuition was initially contracted out to external teachers.

The Department of Music has offered much to Dunedin, and the wider world, ever since it started in 1926. It’s nice that this is a reciprocal relationship, with those who enjoy music supporting its teaching. And how appropriate it is that money earned from seeds got it started and helped it flourish!

Advertisement for Nimmo & Blair from the Otago Daily Times, 9 November 1895. Image from PapersPast, courtesy of the National Library of New Zealand.