Books published by Otago University Press

"The University of Otago has always taken pride in its status as New Zealands first university. Starting a university in 1869 was a bold move: other regions observed Otagos action with a mixture of surprise, scepticism and envy. The venture paid off: from small beginnings, the university grew into a large institution with local, national and international significance. Like any organisation, the University of Otago has had its good times and its bad times. It has been at some periods and in some ways deeply conservative, and in other ways boldly entrepreneurial. A good history is a critical assessment rather than a public relations exercise, and Alison Clarke has consulted and researched widely to produce a forthright and fascinating account. While traditional institutional histories focus on the achievements of the most senior staff, she has been at pains to write an inclusive history painted on a much broader canvas. This history is arranged thematically, looking at the universitys foundation and administration; the evolving student body; the staff; the changing academic structure and the development of research; the Christchurch and Wellington campuses and the universitys presence in Auckland and Invercargill; key support services libraries, press, student health and counselling, disability services, Måaori Centre and Pacific Islands Centre; the changing styles of teaching; the universitys built environment; and finally, the universitys place in the world its relationship with the city of Dunedin, its interaction with mana whenua and its importance to New Zealand and to the Pacific"--Inside front flap.

"As one of eight writers, poet Janet Charman was invited in 2009 to take part in a hectic, immersive literary residency in Hong Kong. Written out of this time of stimulating buzz, 仁 surrender chronicles the tensions, translations and literary crushes that ensue, with ever-present comedy. From this intense hothouse and these privileged constraints flow narrative poems that capture the creative and cultural dislocation of travel, with its petty irritants and constant surprises. "

An out-of-the-way corner of the South Island, the Catlins is a beautiful and relatively unspoilt area with many natural attractions, including that rare thing on the east coast, native forest. Neville Peat introduces the region - its flora, wildlife, bush walks, caves and waterfalls - before tracing the journey along the stunning Southern Scenic Route linking Otago, Southland and Fiordland.

New Zealanders started hearing things in different ways when new audio technologies arrived from overseas in the late 19th century. In The World's Din, Peter Hoar documents the arrival of the first such "e;talking machines"e; and their growing place in New Zealanders' public and private lives, through the years of radio to the dawn of television. In so doing, he chronicles a sonic revolution-the radical change in the way New Zealanders heard the world. Audio technology, since its advent in the late 19th century, has been a continued refinement of the original innovation, even in the contemporary era of digital sound, with iPods, streaming audio, and Spotify. The World's Din is a beautifully written account of this refinement in New Zealand that will delight music-lovers and technophiles everywhere.

In 1915, 160 Niuean men joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and set sail to Egypt and France. Most had never left the island before, or worn shoes before. Most spoke no English, and most significantly, they had no immunity to European disease. Within three months of leaving New Zealand, over 80 per cent of them had been hospitalized. Margaret Pointer traced the lost story of Niue's involvement in World War I while living on the island in the 1990s. The resulting book, Tagi Tote e Loto Haaku: My Heart is Crying a Little, was published in 2000. This moving story has now been set in a wider Pacific context and also considers the contribution made by colonial troops to the Allied effort.

This stylish and affordable hardback is an exciting compendium of adventure and nature writing, history, philosophy and literature, from the quirky to the sublime. Aimed at real mountaineers as well as the armchair variety.

This book celebrates 30 years of Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Pacific Underground, Pacific Theatre, The Laughing Samoans, The Conch, The Naked Samoans, Kila Kokonut Krew the distinctive style and themes of Pasifika theatre have been developed by many individuals and theatre companies in New Zealand. Authors Lisa Warrington and David ODonnell have interviewed over 30 theatre practitioners to tell the story of Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa from 1984 to 2015. This lively book showcases playwrights, directors and performers whose heritage lies in Samoa, Niue, Fiji, Tonga, Tokelau and the Cook Islands. Extracts from the interviews are threaded throughout the book, providing often entertaining insights into their history and creative practice. While the immigrant experience of living in two worlds is often seen as troubled, the authors suggest that this in-between-ness has been turned to advantage in Pasifika theatre to create a unique and often subversive performance phenomenon. Not only is Pasifika theatre a success story within the performing arts in New Zealand, it is also an intriguing case study of migrant theatre that has international resonance.

This book looks at the lives of New Zealanders during the greatest armed struggle the world has ever seen: the Second World War. It is not a political, economic or military history; rather it explores what life was like during the war years for ordinary people living under the New Zealand flag. It questions the war as a story of good against bad. All readers know that the Axis powers behaved ruthlessly, but how many are aware of the brutality of the Allied powers in bombing and starving enemy towns and cities? New Zealand colluded in and even carried out such brutal aggressions. Were we, in going to war, really on the side of the angels? Contrary to the propaganda of the time -- and subsequent memory -- going to war did not unite New Zealanders: it divided them, often bitterly. People disagreed over whether or not we should fight, what we were fighting for and why, who was fighting, who was paying, and who was dying. In this provocative and moving book, Stevan and Hugh Eldred-Grigg explore New Zealanders hopes and fears, beliefs and superstitions, shortages and affluence, rationing and greed, hysteria and humour, violence and kindness, malevolence and generosity, to argue that New Zealand need not have involved itself in the war at all.

This book is about disobedience. Positive disobedience. Disobedience as a kind of professional behaviour. It shows how teachers can survive and even influence an education system that does staggering damage to potential. More importantly it is an arm around the shoulder of disobedient teachers who transform people's lives, not by climbing promotion ladders but by operating at the grassroots. Disobedient Teaching tells stories from the chalk face. Some are funny and some are heartbreaking, but they all happen in New Zealand schools. This book says you can reform things in a system that has become obsessed with assessment and tick-box reporting. It shows how the essence of what makes a great teacher is the ability to change educational practices that have been shaped by anxiety, ritual and convention. Disobedient Teaching argues the transformative power of teachers who think and act.

This volume of Charles Brasch's journals covers the years from late 1945 to the end of 1957, when the poet and editor was aged 36 to 48. It begins with his return to New Zealand after World War II to establish a literary quarterly to be published by the Caxton Press. The journals cover the first decade or so of his distinguished editorship of Landfall, a role that brought Brasch into contact with New Zealand's leading artists and intelligentsia. His frank and often detailed descriptions of these people - including Frank Sargeson, A.R.D. Fairburn, Keith Sinclair, Eric McCormick, James Bertram, J.C. Beaglehole, Maria Dronke, Fred and Evelyn Page, Alistair Campbell, Bill Oliver, Toss and Edith Woollaston, Denis Glover, Allen Curnow, Leo Bensemann, Lawrence Baigent, Ngaio Marsh, Colin McCahon, James K. Baxter, Janet Frame, Ruth Dallas and many others - are among the highlights of the book.

The Depression of the 1930s was a defining period in New Zealand history. It had its own vocabulary – swaggers and sugarbags, relief work and sustenance, the Queen Street riots and special constables – that was all too familiar to those who lived through that tumultuous decade. But one generation's reality is another's history. The desperate struggles experienced by many for work, food and shelter during the 1930s eventually gave way to the sunny postwar years, when the Depression was no more than an uncomfortable memory. And now, for the children of the twenty-first century, it's just a word. While the lives of those most affected by the Depression have been admirably documented in oral histories in various forms, the political and economic context, and the manoeuvrings and responses to the unprecedented conditions have not, until now, been given the extensive analysis they deserve. The Broken Decade, Malcolm McKinnon's detailed and absorbing history of this period, unpicks the Depression year by year. It begins by introducing the prosperous world of New Zealand in the late 1920s before focusing on the sudden onset of the Depression in 1930–31, the catastrophic months that followed and, finally, on the attempt to find a way back to that pre-Depression prosperity. Informed by exhaustive research, relevant statistics and fascinating personal accounts, and made accessible and meaningful by insightful analysis, this important book will become New Zealand's definitive study of the 1930s Depression.

After establishing a poetic presence on the literary scene in the early 1960s, Dunedin's Alan Roddick published his first collection, The Eye Corrects: Poems 1955-1965, in 1967. A mere 49 years later comes the sequel, Getting it Right. Poet C.K. Stead writes in Shelf Life (AUP, 2016) that he has always been "a great admirer of the economy and the quiet, sharp wit of [Roddick's] writing ... Alan Roddick is a 'cool' poet, a temperament that seems reserved, controlled, decent, funny and intelligent; a craftsman not a showman, with a fine musical ear, whose work is dependable and of the highest order. And as well as witty and clever work, there are poems that catch moments of deep feeling; and equally of exhilaration, such as the ten-year-old Alan standing up on the seat, his head through the sunroof of his father's car that is cruising downhill, 'pushing 40' with the engine off to save petrol, 'drunk with the scent of heather and whin / that airy silence ...' Alan Roddick is writing as well as any New Zealand poet currently at work on the scene. It is wonderful to have him back - something to celebrate!"

The Lives of Colonial Objects is a sumptuously illustrated and highly readable book about things, and the stories that unfold when we start to investigate them. In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Maori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand's colonial past. Some are treasured family possessions such as a kahu kiwi, a music album or a grandmother's travel diary, and their stories have come down through families. Some, like the tauihu of a Maori waka, a Samoan kilikiti bat or a flying boat, are housed in museums. Others - a cannon, a cottage and a country road - inhabit public spaces but they too turn out to have unexpected histories. Things invite us into the past through their tangible, tactile and immediate presence: in this collection they serve as 50 paths into New Zealand's colonial history.