Presenters: Professor Warwick Anderson

In 1929, the Lutheran mission at Hermannsburg (Ntaria), central Australia, became an extraordinary investigatory site, attracting an array of leading psychologists wishing to define the 'primitive' mentality of the Arrernte, who became perhaps the most studied people in the British empire and dominions. This is a story of how scientific knowledge derived from close encounters and fraught entanglements on the borderlands of the settler state. The investigators - Stanley D. Porteus, H.K. Fry and Géza Róheim - represent the major styles of psychological inquiry in the early-twentieth century. They wanted to evaluate "how natives think", yet inescapably they found themselves reflecting on white mentality too. They came to recognise the primitive as an influential and disturbing motif within the civilised mind - their own minds. These intense interactions in the central deserts show us how Aboriginal thinking could make whites think again about themselves - and forget, for a moment, that many of their research subjects were starving.

Presenters: Professor Thomas Schwartz

Henry Kissinger was arguably the most famous and controversial American diplomat of the 20th century. His ideas about American foreign policy, and his approach to international relations, remain influential. This presentation examines Kissinger's biography, as well as his behaviour in office, his conception of foreign policy "realism" and the influence of domestic politics on his ideas.

Presenters: Professor Saul Dubow

The embrace of human rights discourse by South Africans in the post-1990 era is surprising, not only given the history of institutionalised oppression under apartheid, but also because the African National Congress has an ambivalent record towards rights.

This lecture will investigate how the Apartheid government and the African National Congress 'discovered' human rights at precisely the same time, in the mid-1980s.

Keynotes

Friday 15th February 2013 ** Ireland and the Wider World, ca 1600-1750: The Political Aspect **Nicholas Canny, National University of Ireland 6.00pm – 7.00pm, Theatre B, Old Arts (Building 149)

Saturday 16th February 2013 Lisa Bitel, University of Southern California Away with the Fairies," or: I Must Have Taken a Wrong Turn at Tír na nÓg 4.00pm – 5.00pm, Lower Theatrette, Babel (Building 139)

Irish Studies Workshop

9.30am – 5.00pm, Saturday the 16th February, Jim Potter Room, Old Physics (Building 128)

9.30-11.00am
Gender, violence and memory: looking for Derbforgaill in Irish History Dianne Hall, Victoria University

Darwinism and the Irish Revival Ronan McDonald, University of New South Wales

11.30am-1.00pm
The Irish Abroad, ca. 1600-1750 Nicolas Canny, National University of Ireland, Galway

Irish Studies in Australia –Pre and Post 2000 Philip Bull, La Trobe University Elizabeth Malcolm, University of Melbourne

2.00-3.30pm
Max Arthur Macauliffe (1838-1913), Irish Sikh Scholar Tadhg Foley, National University of Ireland, Galway

Irish Studies and the Theatre Peter Kuch, University of Otago

Please note the different locations of this conference

Climate change is one of the most daunting challenges to face humanity. At this event three philosophers will consider some of the most pressing moral issues posed by climate change. Peter Singer “What did you do to save the planet? Climate change and individual responsibility” will consider the individual responsibilities that people have to act to save the planet. Jeremy Moss “Exporting Harm” will discuss how fossil fuel exporting countries such as Australia have extra burdens in relation to their carbon budget. Axel Gosseries will consider the importance of historical responsibility, "Does rejecting responsibility for historical emissions make a significant difference?"

Jeremy Moss is Director of the Social Justice Initiative University of Melbourne Peter Singer, AC, is Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics University Center for Human Values Princeton University and Laureate Professor, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne Axel Gosseries Permanent Research Fellow, Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) Professor, Louvain University, Belgium.

Presenters: Julia Brennan

In 2012 Thailand’s first royal textile museum and textile conservation lab opened in Bangkok. The Queen Sirikit Textile Museum represents the culmination of Her Majesty’s lifelong effort to revive the production of indigenous textiles and preserve Thailand’s diverse textile heritage. Establishing Thailand’s first national textile conservation lab and training centre affirms her commitment to long-term preservation of this heritage.

Since 2008, Julia has been the conservation consultant to the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles, Bangkok, Thailand. Conservation efforts focused on the problems inherent to the preservation of textiles in a tropical climate. The highlights of a multi-year effort included the preparation of over one hundred textiles for the inaugural exhibitions ; implementing the integrated pest management program and mitigation of a major mould and insect infestation; establishment of the humidity and temperature monitoring systems; training of the museum conservators; and the conservation team’s advisory and training role for implementing sustainable and practical solutions for the long term storage of textiles housed both at the museum and in the inner court’s traditional treasuries; and the conservation outreach and training objectives within Thailand and Southeast Asia.

Julia M. Brennan has worked in the field of textile conservation for over 26 years. Her company, Textile Conservation Services, founded in 1996, is based in Washington DC. She does a full range of textile treatments, display, installations, storage and survey work for institutions, historical sites and private clients. She frequently lectures to historical societies and collector groups on the care and display of textiles and is passionately committed to conservation outreach and the protection of cultural property. From 2000 to 2008, she led four textile training workshops in Bhutan, and did workshops in both Madagascar and Algeria. She is currently training a new generation of textile conservators in Thailand, and helping to establish the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles in Bangkok. Julia Brennan is a Professional Associate of the American Institute for Conservation, a Director of the Washington Conservation Guild, and founder of the Collections Care Network CCN. She received her Masters in art crime from ARCA The Association for Research in Crimes Against Art, 2010.

Presenters: Professor Richard Immerman

Miegunyah Lecture

Professor Immerman's intimate knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community is founded on three decades of scholarship and a rare first-hand look at intelligence operations in a high-level, two-year stint at the office of the Director of National Intelligence. His writings have shaped debates about the use of intelligence in the United States and elsewhere. In this talk, he shows that because the designers of the CIA did not intend covert operations to fall under its mandate, the CIA assumed this responsibility without adequate training and at the expense of its primary mission: intelligence collection and analysis. The result has been a history of operational and estimative failure, extending up to the Obama administration.

Professor Richard Immerman is the Edward J. Buthusiem Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow in History and the Marvin Wachtman Director of the Center for the Study of Force and Diplomacy at Temple University. He has served as a high-ranking intelligence officer in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and has authored, coauthored and edited nine books, including prizewinning studies of the Eisenhower administration and of CIA covert operations. His latest book, to be published by Wiley Blackwell at the end of this year, is a history of the CIA titled The Hidden Hand.

There will be a reception at 5.30pm in the foyer of the theatre.

Presenters: Professor Peter Singer, Professor Tony Camosy

A public conversation with Peter Singer and Charles Camosy, moderated by Tony Coady.

Interaction between Peter Singer and Christian ethicists, to the extent that it has happened at all, has been unproductive and often antagonistic. Singer sees himself as leading a 'Copernican Revolution' against a sanctity of life ethic, while many Christians associate his work with a 'culture of death.' In his recent book, Charles Camosy argues that this polarized understanding of the two positions is a mistake. While their conclusions about abortion and euthanasia may differ, there is surprising overlap in Christian and Singerite arguments, and disagreements are interesting and fruitful. Christians and Singerites can even make common cause in matters such as global poverty and the dignity of non-human animals.

Peter Singer is Australia’s best-known public intellectual. He is Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values.

Charles Camosy is a theologian and ethicist at Fordham University, whose work focuses on bioethics, Catholic social teaching, and distributive justice.

Tony Coady was Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne from 1990-1998 and is now Vice Chancellor’s Fellow and Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at that university.

Presenters: Professor Glenda Sluga

When Australia recently earned a long-anticipated seat on the UN Security Council, there was some discussion of its relevance, but little recognition of its historical significance, despite the fact for more than a century Australians have been deeply involved at popular and governmental level in international institutions and international politics and in the conceptualization of international law and human rights.

In this lecture, Professor Glenda Sluga will map a new chronology of the twentieth century around the concept of internationalism, with specific attention to the 1940s and the early years of the United Nations as the ‘apogee of internationalism’. Her aim is to explore the possibilities of the new international history that has appeared on the horizon and that is already changing the way we understand the significance of internationalism in the present.

Professor Glenda Sluga, a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Sussex University is Professor of International History at the University of Sydney. Her most recent book is Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism published by UPenn Press in 2013.

‘Australia in the World’ is a new lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the inter-connectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor Angelos Chaniotis

Theatricality and Illusion in Public Life: Hellenistic Paradigms and Modern Experiences

The Hellenistic world, from Alexander to Cleopatra, is characterized by an interest in theatrical display (e.g. through the carefully staged appearance of public figures, the staged appearance of statues, the celebration of festivals) and illusion (illusion in visual arts, the illusion of democracy in political institutions).

These elements, not only recognized by scholars but also by the poet Cavafy, give the Hellenistic period a very ‘modern’ appearance and invite us to reflect on similar phenomena in the modern world: the use of the media, the staged appearances of statesmen, and the limits of democratic institutions.

Professor Angelos Chaniotis was born in Athens, educated in Greece and Germany, and has held various positions at prestigious institutes in Germany, the United States and England. His knowledge and understanding of the ancient Greek world is both broad and deep. He is engaged in wide-ranging research in the social, cultural, religious, legal, and economic history of the Hellenistic world and the Roman East. The author of many books and articles and senior editor of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, he has worked on war, religion, communicative aspects of rituals, and strategies of persuasion in the ancient world.

His current research focuses on emotions, memory, and identity. Significant questions and dialogues in the field have grown out of his contributions, which have helped to advance understanding of previously unexplored aspects of the ancient world.

Presenters: Dr Zoe Laidlaw

Why British Advocates of Indigenous Rights Embraced 'Systematic Colonization' in the 1830s and 1840s

The Aborigines' Protection Society (1837-1909) is recognised as one of the most important nineteenth-century human rights organisations, because it advocated indigenous rights in the face of British imperialism. Unlike many of its contemporaries, the Aborigines' Protection Society urged the recognition of indigenous land rights and worked tirelessly to publicise the evils of colonialism around the globe. However, its impact was subdued: during the society’s existence, indigenous peoples faced increasing violence and dispossession, while racism became ever more pronounced.

In South Australia and New Zealand, a group known as the ‘systematic colonizers’ particularly drove settler colonialism, using government-endorsed companies to fund emigration schemes from the sale of colonial land. Yet while the interests of the systematic colonizers were diametrically opposed to those of indigenous landowners, the APS enthusiastically endorsed systematic colonization.

This seminar explores this apparent paradox and what it reveals about the mid-nineteenth century British Empire.

Zoë Laidlaw is Reader in Imperial and Colonial History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She was educated at the Universities of Melbourne and Oxford. Her research covers Britain's empire and colonies in the nineteenth century, with a particular emphasis on imperial networks, humanitarianism, governance and science.

She wrote Colonial Connections 1815-45: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Governance (2005) and is currently editing a collection called Dispossession: Indigenous survival, land holding and loss in the midst of settler colonialism with Alan Lester, and writing a monograph, Protecting Humanity, on the relationship between British humanitarianism and colonialism.

Presenters: Professor Tony Coady

The role of religion in politics is a hot topic in contemporary liberal democratic politics. Many feel that strong religious commitments should play no part in avowedly secular democracies, yet on issues to do with education, health (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research), marital status, immigration, “national security” and much else, such commitments clearly matter to many politicians and voters.

Philosophers have recently discussed what theoretical basis can be provided for beliefs about the role of religion in the public life of secular democracies, seeking thereby to discover the legitimate demands that liberal democratic justice can make of religious citizens and religious institutions and the degree to which religious reasons can be allowed to decide public policy in such societies. This lecture will review these debates and question the claim that secular or public reason should be the only coinage of important debate and decision-making in the public arena of a liberal democratic society.

Tony Coady is one of Australia's best-known philosophers, with an outstanding international reputation for his writings on epistemology and on political violence and political ethics. He was Boyce Gibson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne from 1990-1998 and is now Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics.

His book Testimony: a Philosophical Study (OUP, 1992) has had a significant impact on developments in contemporary epistemology. More recently he published Morality and Political Violence (CUP, 2008) and Messy Morality: the Challenge of Politics (OUP, 2008). In 2012, he was Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford.

This lecture is part of the 2013 School of Historical and Philosophical Studies 'How the Humanities inform Justice' Public Lecture Series.

Presenters: Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe AM

A symposium to honour the life and work of Chris Wallace-Crabbe with papers, panel discussions, an interview, musical performances, a display of artists' books and manuscripts, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe reading his poetry. Participants include Cassandra Atherton, Michelle Borzi, Justin Clemens, Tommaso Durante, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Peter Goldsworthy, Kristin Headlam, Ellen Koshland, Linda Kouvaras, Bruno Leti, David Malouf, Caz Masel, Philip Mead, Joel Trigg and Stephanie Trigg.

Presenters: Professor Francisca de Haan

International women’s organizations have played a major role in enhancing women’s status and rights across the 20th century. Three organizations have been especially important: the Western-oriented, liberal-feminist International Council of Women (ICW) and International Alliance of Women (IAW), and the left-feminist Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF).

This lecture will highlight the impact of Cold War politics on these organizations themselves and the subsequent writing of history. Australian feminist Jessie Street, founding president of the United Associations (of Women), was a member of the Australian Delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations Organization in 1945 and actively involved with the WIDF.

She provides a good example of how world politics impacted on the international women’s movement and some of its key protagonists.

Francisca de Haan is Professor of Gender Studies and History at the Central European University in Budapest, and currently a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has published widely in the fields of modern European history, women’s political activism, transnational history, and gender and the Cold War. She is founding editor of Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern and South-eastern European Women’s and Gender History and served as Vice-President of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH) (2005-2010).

'Australia in the World' is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the inter-connectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Visiting International Scholars Award (Faculty of Arts).

Presenters: Kate Bagnall, Professor Joy Damousi, Professor Sheila Fitzpatrick

In conventional histories of the nation, migrants have usually been represented as making a particular ‘contribution’ to the ‘national story’ in their capacity as members of an ethnic or national category.

It is usually assumed that they come to stay eventually becoming members of the ‘migrant nation’. Recently, this narrative has been complicated by transnational frames of historical analysis that allow us to see the various ways in which migrants have lived ‘both here and there’ ( in Adam McKeown’s words) both in terms of their subjective experience and in movement between old and new homelands. It has also been recognised that migrants’ lives can’t be reduced to an ‘ethnic’ experience, that ignores the formative economic, political, religious and familial dimensions of migration.

The transnational Chinese family in Australia

Kate Bagnall has published pioneering work on Chinese Australian family migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the migration of white Australian wives of Chinese men to China. She works in Canberra as a print and web editor as well as a historical researcher.

Australian Greek migration, war memory and its legacies

Joy Damousi is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. Her current project is Greek War Stories, which examines memories of the Second World War and the Greek Civil War in post-war Greek migrant communities.

'New Australians' from the Soviet Union via DP camps

Sheila Fitzpatrick is an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney and Professor Emerita at the University of Chicago. Primarily a Soviet historian, her current ARC project is about displaced persons from the Soviet Union who ended up in Australia after the Second World War.

Presenters: Dr Mammad Aidani

In the midst of political, cultural and religious transformations how is democracy and justice perceived in Middle Eastern societies? How can political freedom and social justice transform the political consciousness of these societies? And can forgiveness subdue the suffering, the fragmentation, violence and instability suffusing the Middle East? But more importantly what is the value of forgiveness in war torn Iraq, paralysis in Syria, democracy stalled in Egypt, Iranian human rights violations and noncompliance with IAEA and UN security requirements?

Dr Aidani will discuss these questions in the context of the polarisation between modernity, religious sectarianism and secularism and how these ideologies are shaping identity and the political cleavages of power. His talk will frame how the political struggle for democratisation in authoritarian Middle Eastern societies is being reconfigured by the contours of rival political agendas and confrontation.

Dr Mammad Aidani’s research interests are in the genres of textual interpretation (hermeneutics) and lived narratives in the fields of history, culture, displacement, memory, trauma and suffering in diaspora communities as well as literature and theatre. His recent publications include Welcoming the Stranger: Narratives of Identity and Belonging in an Iranian Diaspora (2010) Melbourne: Common Ground publishing) and Narrative and Violence: Ways of Suffering amongst Iranian Men in Diaspora (2013) London: Ashgate Publishing.

This lecture is part of the 2013 School of Historical and Philosophical Studies 'How the Humanities inform Justice' Public Lecture Series.

Presenters: Dr Sascha Auerbach, Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson, Dr Ben Mountford

This seminar focuses on new research on the historical relationships between the British and Chinese empires and British and Chinese Australians.

Sascha Auerbach explores relations between the imperial and the intimate, the ways in which Victorian class and gender expectations shaped British and Australian understandings of the possibility of Chinese assimilation into British societies, at a time when the home was increasingly becoming a public, legal space inspected and regulated by the state.

Ben Mountford focuses on the Australian participation in the Boxer War to examine how Britons at home, in China and in Australia perceived the Australian contribution and its implications for Britain’s imperial future and the growing importance of ‘Greater Britain’ to British interests in Asia.

Sophie Loy-Wilson looks at responses in Australia to Japanese imperialism in China in the 1930s and especially the ‘Save China’ campaign instigated by the Chinese Australian community and debates among humanitarian groups, who likened Japanese imperialism in China to British imperialism in Australia.

Dr Sascha Auerbach is a lecturer at Nottingham University and author of Race, Law and ‘The Chinese Puzzle’ in Imperial Britain (Palgrave, 2009).

Dr Ben Mountford is the M.G. Brock Junior Research Fellow in Modern British History at Oxford University whose research and teaching interests centre on Australian, British, Global and Imperial History.

Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson is a Lecturer in Australian Studies at Deakin University, where she teaches and writes about Australian history in a transnational context, with a particular focus on anti-colonialism and China-Australia relations in the first half of the twentieth century.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the inter-connectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Chinese Museum.

Presenters: Paul Couch

The act of ‘making’ artefacts and then conserving them has consequences. The ZEITGEIST lecture program has been developed to explore this proposition through the contemporary eye of the ‘maker’.

The eighth speaker for Zeitgeist I is Paul Couch.

ZEITGEIST I concerns the discipline of architecture. Architects choose how a building is made, what it is made from, and how it appears. These decisions call upon entirely different conditions of style. Ten architects from across Australia will describe how the necessity of style is answered directly in the medium of construction (materials, fabrication and the technique of building).

ZEITGEIST I is an initiative of The University of Melbourne Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation in partnership with the Robin Boyd Foundation.

The lectures are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (February to November 2013 inclusive) and will take place in the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Walsh Street House. This building, designed in 1958, is the perfect setting to consider how matter is charged with artistic intent.

Eighth Zeitgeist I speaker: Paul Couch, Architect Melbourne Paul's talk will describe his use of concrete in its natural state as an enduring material.

Paul Couch was born in Melbourne and attended the University of Melbourne amid the strengthening postwar ambitions of the Architecture Faculty pioneered by Professor Brian Lewis, Fritz Janeba and Zdenko Strizic.

Paul then joined the firm of Grounds, Romberg and Boyd and worked with each of the Partners, surviving the departure of Roy Grounds to the National Art Gallery project and Frederick Romberg to the University of Newcastle in the early 1960s. He continued to work with Robin Boyd until 1971 and returned to Romberg & Boyd as a Director in 1980.

Over this 20-year period Paul was involved with the ETA Factory in Braybrook (1957), Academy of Science in Canberra (1958), ANU’s Zoology School (1964), National Gallery of Victoria (1968), Ormond College and McCaughey Court (1968), and the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Headquarters in Canberra (1971). His work with Robin Boyd included the Fletcher House in Brighton, Kaye House at Oliver's Hill, Featherston House at Ivanhoe, and Purves House at Kew. Some years later Paul built the model of the Boyd II House for the RAIA exhibition “Home Sweet Home" which is now held by Museum Victoria.

Since establishing private practice in 1971, and briefly forming the partnership of Carter Couch Architects from 1984 to 1989, Paul has largely developed his style through the problems of concrete construction. Registered for many years as a Building Practitioner with the Building Commission, he has worked alongside concrete contractors, demonstrating a rare personal engagement with building construction. In 40 years this has resulted in over 30 fire-tough houses located in and around the Macedon Ranges, Melbourne and elsewhere in country Victoria. To date nearly all of his work is unpublished.

Paul has received numerous architecture awards from the Australian Institute of Architects, the Master Builders Association and the Age Public Architecture award.

Presenters: Dr Jenny Webb

In 1942, when the Hellenic Mines Corporation began mining a small copper ore-body at Ambelikou in northwest Cyprus, they found Middle Bronze Age pottery and ancient stone hammers in their underground shafts. This remains the earliest direct evidence for copper mining on the island, which has some of the most substantial copper deposits in the world. These discoveries led to several months of excavations at Ambelikou by the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, which unfortunately were never published.

This lecture will tell the story of recent efforts to document and interpret the architecture and finds, some 70 years after the event, and reports on the discovery of evidence for mining, smelting and casting and of the earliest pottery production workshop yet known on Cyprus.

Jenny Webb is Charles La Trobe Research Fellow with the Archaeology Program at La Trobe University, and Editor-in-Chief of "Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology", a monograph series published in Sweden by Astroms Forlag. She held an Australian Research Council Fellowship at La Trobe University from 1998 to 2002 and has co-directed excavations at Marki, Deneia and Politiko in Cyprus. She is also the Honorary President of the Classical Association of Victoria.

Presenters: Professor Henry Yu

Professor Henry Yu examines the ways in which nation-building narratives and the political movements on which they were based in Australia, New Zealand, and the western territories of Canada and the United States used anti-Chinese and anti-Asian exclusion to cohere national belonging around white supremacy and how in overcoming racial exclusion and discrimination, a complex history of interaction between Chinese migrants, indigenous peoples and other migrants has been recovered that promises (and threatens) to remake our understandings of the modern Pacific world and the white settler nations that emerged from the British empire.

Henry Yu is Principal of St. John's College and Associate Professor of History at the University of British Columbia, where his research and teaching aims to provide perspectives on global migration history as a means of unsettling the national historiographies of settler societies. With Professor Peter Ward he worked on an SSHRC-funded project to create a digital database of approximately 96,000 Chinese Canadians who paid the discriminatory Head Tax between 1885-1923. Professor Yu’s first book Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact and Exoticism in Modern America (Oxford University Press, 2001) won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize at the AHA for Most Distinguished Book of 2001. He has published numerous studies of ‘Pacific Canada’ which will also be the focus on his next book.

The lecture will be followed by the launch of three publications: a special issue of the Journal of Chinese Overseas: Chinese Australians: Politics, Engagement and Activism, Mei-fen Kuo, Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese Australian Identity, 1892–1912 (Monash University Publishing) and Mei-fen Kuo and Judith Brett, Unlocking the History of the Australasian Kuo Min Tang, 1911-2013 (Australian Scholarly Publishing).

Please join us in Arts Hall after the lecture to celebrate these very special publications.

'Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the inter-connectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

The act of ‘making’ artefacts and then conserving them has consequences. The ZEITGEIST lecture program has been developed to explore this proposition through the contemporary eye of the ‘maker’.

The ninth speaker for Zeitgeist I is Richard Leplastrier.

ZEITGEIST I concerns the discipline of architecture. Architects choose how a building is made, what it is made from, and how it appears. These decisions call upon entirely different conditions of style. Ten architects from across Australia will describe how the necessity of style is answered directly in the medium of construction (materials, fabrication and the technique of building).

ZEITGEIST I is an initiative of the University of Melbourne Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation in partnership with the Robin Boyd Foundation.

The lectures are scheduled for the last Tuesday evening of each month (February to November 2013 inclusive) and will take place in the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Walsh Street House. This building, designed in 1958, is the perfect setting to consider how matter is charged with artistic intent.

Every work of architecture is underpinned by a particular idea, hopefully a beautiful one. This idea is realized through a thorough understanding of place, space, light and structure. Then there is the issue of crafting. Every part fits the whole. It is symphonic. If not then it is mere building. Launched into life such a work needs not an owner but a custodian.How it is allowed to change or allowed to change at all, are questions of ethics. This talk will hover around these issues.

Richard Leplastrier has been an architect in private practice for 40 years and occasionally teaches.

Presenters: Associate Professor Gocha Tsetskhladze

Pessinus in Central Anatolia, a Phrygian site, is considered to have been the sacral city of Cybele, the Great Mother Goddess. Between 1967 and 2008, with several years of interruption, it was excavated by a team from Ghent University in Belgium. Melbourne, at the head of an international team, took over this project in 2009, supported since 2010 by a grant from the ARC under its Discovery scheme.

This lecture presents the principal results of the 2010, 2011 and 2013 seasons – what has been achieved and what new information has come to light through excavations, surveys, geophysics, archaeozoological, numismatic and epigraphic studies, etc., both in Pessinus itself and the surrounding areas.

Gocha Tsetskhladze (Ph.D. Moscow, D.Phil. Oxford) is a classical archaeologist who specialises in ancient Greek colonisation and the archaeology of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, Caucasus, Anatolia, and Central and Eastern Europe in the 1st millennium BC. For more than 20 years he has excavated several Greek colonial sites around the Black Sea (in Georgia, Russia and the Ukraine).

In 2009 he became Director of the Excavations at Pessinus (sacral city of Cybele, the Great Mother Goddess) in Central Anatolia (Turkey), supported by an ARC Discovery grant. Recently, he was appointed an Associate Editor of the multi-volume international project Historical and Archaeological Atlas of Asia Minor, to be published by Brill (Netherlands/USA).

Presenters: Andrea Argirides

Special Ancient World Studies Seminar

This presentation will address the protection of cultural heritage and archaeological sites located in war zones within various theatres of operations in which the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has operated, specifically for Afghanistan. This is a topic that is particularly relevant for current and future operational practices for deployed forces. The aim of this presentation is to focus on key points pertaining to Afghanistan with respect to its landscape, history, archaeology, and cultural heritage, drawing on the speaker’s recent 8-month tour of duty in the country. Despite heavy military commitments in Kabul, this deployment also provided an opportunity to witness Afghanistan’s unique cultural landscape, including the Museum in Kabul.

Andrea Argirides is Lieutenant Commander (LCDR) in the Australian Defence Force. In December 2007, Andrea deployed to Baghdad in Iraq, embedded with the 18th Airborne Corp, Multi National Corp Iraq, US Central Command. In February 2013, she also completed an 8-month tour of duty in Afghanistan (based in Kabul); she is currently posted at Headquarters Joint Operations Command in Canberra. Andrea is a PhD candidate at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Centre for Classics and Archaeology, at the University of Melbourne, and her thesis focuses on the protection of cultural heritage in conflict zones, using Iraq as a case study.

Presenters: Professor Emma Dench

What did it mean to be Roman in the ancient world, why did it matter in antiquity, and how might the study of the Roman empire benefit the modern world? We will explore some of the very different ways in which groups and individuals in the Roman empire imagined and acted out what it was to be Roman and what Roman power meant to them.

At the same time, we will consider how far the case of Rome offers us a useful perspective on some of the issues that are of most concern in our own societies, such as the meaning of citizenship in a global world, the interaction between the global and the local, and when and where to anticipate challenges to sovereignty.

Emma Dench was educated at the University of Oxford (BA Hons. Literae Humaniores and D.Phil. in Ancient History). She was appointed Professor of the Classics and of History at Harvard University in 2006. She has been a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome, a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard.

Her most recent book is Romulus’ Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford UP, 2005), and she is currently completing Imperialism and Culture in the Roman World (Cambridge UP).

Presenters: Professor Lyndal Roper

Martin Luther is famed as the man who split the Catholic church and started the German Reformation, one of those rare individuals who really do ‘make history’. An extraordinarily courageous man, he could also be extremely belligerent. His was a Reformation which worked by upholding the power of secular rulers, and so he is often accused of being subservient to them. But he also wrote a series of tracts that took on key rulers of the day.

These pamphlets are full of vivid and scurrilous abuse, and they revel in the rhetoric of manhood and the feud. Most theologians attack other theologians: why did Luther attack rulers in this way? What does this tell us about manhood in the sixteenth century, and how the Reformation might have changed models of masculinity?

Lyndal Roper is a graduate of the University of Melbourne where she studied History with Philosophy. She has written several books on witchcraft in Germany, including Oedipus and the Devil, Witch Craze, and The Witch in the Western Imagination. She teaches History at the University of Oxford, where she is Regius Professor, the first woman and the first Australian to hold the post.

Presenters: Sarah Midford

This lecture traces the use of the classics in the construction of the Anzac tradition and the commemoration of Anzac soldiers who fell during the Great War (1914-1918). Since the first Australian soldiers landed on the beach at Gallipoli in April 1915 they have been likened to ancient Greek warrior heroes. However, the Trojan hero is simply one aspect of the multi-faceted Australian Anzac archetypal hero whose construction is equally informed by ancient Greek democratic ideals.

This lecture will briefly examine C.E.W. Bean’s use of the ancient Greek past in the commemoration of the Anzac soldier before focussing on allusions to Homeric heroes in Peter Weir’s Gallipoli (1981). The lecture will emphasise the depth to which the classics are embedded in the Anzac Legend by exploring the characterisation of Weir’s two protagonists Archy Hamilton and Frank Dunne as incarnations of the Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus respectively.

Sarah Midford is completing a PhD thesis at the University of Melbourne on the influence of the classics on the construction and development of the Australian ‘Anzac Legend’.

Since 2010, Sarah has worked on the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey of the Gallipoli Peninsula, recording what remains of the Great War battlefield site. In 2013 Sarah undertook research at the Korfmann Institute in Çanakkale as the Norman Macgeorge Scholar and in 2014 she will return to Çanakkale to excavate at Troy with Dr Rüstem Aslan from Onsekiz Mart University.

Presenters: Professor David Lordkipanidze

The lecture will focus on one of the most important steps in human evolution and its important consequences. This step occurred c. 1.8–1.7 million years ago, and resulted in a species that anticipated living people in every major respect of anatomy, behaviour and ecology, except for its smaller brain. By presenting the extraordinary discoveries at Dmanisi, this lecture will address one of the most exciting yet contentious debates in human evolution - the dawn of humanity and the migration of the earliest peoples out of Africa.

Professor David Lordkipanidze is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists. His research into the earliest prehistory of Europe and his position as first General Director of the National Museum of Georgia has necessarily meant working on several levels at once, across a broad range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. He has led the palaeo-anthropological project at Dmanisi (Republic of Georgia), one of the most exciting fossil hominin sites anywhere in the world, which hit global headlines with the discovery of the earliest known hominin remains outside of Africa.

Lordkipanidze has authored over 100 scientific papers, some cover articles, published in widely respected and well-known scientific journals such as Nature, Science Magazine, and the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of USA. As General Director of the National Museum of Georgia, David Lordkipanidze oversees 10 major museums, and has gradually transformed Soviet era institutions into vibrant cultural and scientific spaces.

Presenters: Professor Alison Bashford

How should we understand the emergence of a world population problem? Concern about the size of the world’s population did not begin with the 'population bomb' in 1968, as sometimes supposed, but arose in the aftermath of World War I as an issue with far-reaching ecological, agricultural, economic, and geopolitical consequences. It concerned the fertility of soil as much as the fertility of women, always involving questions of both 'life' and 'earth'.

Professor Bashford's lecture will show that the growth and distribution of human population over the planet’s surface shaped the very idea of 'civilizations' with different standards of living and thus forged concepts of 'development', demographically-defined 'three worlds', and, for some, an aspirational 'one world'. Population was a problem in which international relations and intimate relations were joined, connecting geopolitical concerns with sovereignty over land with claims to sovereignty over one’s person. Professor Bashford will explain how her interest in Australian history led to her exploration of global history.

Alison Bashford is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney and Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at the University of Cambridge. She has recently co-edited The Cambridge History of Australia (2013) with Stuart Macintyre. Her new book is Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth (Columbia University Press, 2014).

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor Michael Hoff

Few cities of the ancient world can rival Athens’ rich array of cultural splendors. Monuments such as the Parthenon and the Erechtheion serve as visual reminders of Athens’ glory during the Classical Age. But scholars have neglected the era in Athenian history when Rome held dominion over all of Greece and the “Golden Age” of Athens was long passed. Considering the heavy debt the Romans owed to Greece with respect to their own art and culture, it is curious to note the Roman contributions to Athenian art and architecture.

This talk traces the topographical and architectural changes Athens underwent during the formative period of Roman control. There is a particular emphasis on the role Augustus played in the civic transformation based on research by the lecturer.

Professor Hoff received his A.B. in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Missouri, M.A. in Classics from Florida State University, and his Ph.D in Art History from Boston University. Hoff specializes in Greek and Roman archaeology in which he has focused his research on the history of Roman Athens as well as the archaeology of Asia Minor.

In Turkey Hoff co-directed the architectural survey team of the Rough Cilicia Archaeological Survey Project from 1997 to 2004 and since 2005 serves as Project Director of the Antiochia ad Cragum Excavations. Hoff has authored many articles in international journals and has co-edited several books including The Romanization of Athens, published in 1998.

Presenters: Professor Carol Meyers

Several major universities - including Duke University - have been excavating at the Galilean site of Sepphoris since the mid-1980s. Discoveries have included stunning mosaics, grand buildings (synagogue, baths, theater, mansions), a large number of underground cavities (ritual baths, cisterns), and a variety of artifacts (pottery, stone vessels and tools, coins, lamps, bronze statues, and more). This impressive array of materials is important for understanding various aspects of life in the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods.

Carol Meyers (at Duke since 1977) was educated at Wellesley and at Brandeis, where she received her Ph.D. (1975) in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She holds the Mary Grace Wilson Professorship in Religion and is an affiliated faculty member of Duke's Women's Studies Program. A specialist in biblical studies and archaeology, she is a prominent scholar in the study of women in the biblical world.

She has authored or co-authored eleven books and has edited or co-edited five others. In collaboration with Dr. Eric Meyers, she has written Haggai-Zechariah 1-8 and Zechariah 9-14 for Doubleday's Anchor Bible series. Also with E. Meyers, she has published three major archaeological reports and is working on several more. Her book Discovering Eve is a landmark study of women in ancient Israel; and her reference book, Women in Scripture, is the most comprehensive study ever made of women in Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Presenters: Associate Professor Adrienne Edgar

The Soviet Union, like many modern states with ethnically diverse populations, was preoccupied with questions of ethnic mixing. This talk investigates the interplay of an overarching "Soviet" identity and particular ethnic identities in the USSR by examining the experiences of individuals and families on the margins of nationality - those who possessed multiple or ambiguous identities by virtue of being “mixed.”

Drawing on oral history interviews conducted in Kazakhstan, a vast multiethnic republic in Soviet Central Asia, the talk delineates how the official reinforcement of ethnic nationality undermined the consolidation of a Soviet identity, despite the official promotion of the "friendship of peoples."

Adrienne Edgar is Associate Professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. An expert on Soviet and Central Asian history, she is the author of Tribal Nation: The Making of Soviet Turkmenistan (Princeton University Press, 2004) and articles on nationalism and national identity.

Presenters: Professor Shurlee Swain

The establishment of a Royal Commission with an exclusive focus on institutional child sexual abuse has caused disquiet on several fronts, including amongst feminists who fear that it marks a return to a focus on 'stranger danger', diverting attention from sexual abuse within the home.

This lecture will, however, argue, that the Royal Commission would not have been possible without the work of feminists in the 1970s who gave victim/survivors a language through which to describe their experiences and conceptualise them as abuse. While the language of victimhood which dominates submissions today may have little in common with the notion of the empowered sexual subject it is nevertheless an outcome of scholarship and activism which brought sex into discourse and destabilised assumptions of rights of access accorded both the family members and those acting in a quasi-family situation.

Shurlee Swain is a Professor at Australian Catholic University. She has published widely in the history of women and children, with a particular interest in the impact of welfare on individual lives.

Her publications in this area include Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia, Confronting Cruelty, Child, Nation, Race and Empire and Born in Hope: A History of the Early Years of the Family Court of Australia. Currently Professor Swain is the historian chief investigator on the National Find & Connect Web Resource project.

Presenters: Professor Mark Philip Bradley

Today we almost take for granted the presence of human rights norms. If not always honoured in the breach, they are at the centre of a contemporary global moral vocabulary. How did this become so? How and why did human rights become believable in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?

In this lecture, Professor Mark Philip Bradley will explore two critical moments in the making of a global human rights imagination - the 1940s and the 1970s - and their implications for the present moment.

His focus will be on the quotidian ways in which norms forged in transnational space have been employed on local ground to do political work as well as the tensions, partialities and contradictions that have characterized the thickening of a human rights consciousness.

Mark Philip Bradley is the Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of International History at the University of Chicago. His book, The United States and the Global Human Rights Imagination, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2015.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the Melbourne School of Government.

Presenters: Professor Wendy Kline

On Mother’s day in 1970, Joanne Santana, a pregnant, self-proclaimed hippie living in San Francisco, pulled a lightweight paperback book off the shelf at New Age Natural Foods store. Written by Dr. Leo Eloesser, Isabel Hemingway, and Edith Galt, this copy of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn: A Manual for Rural Midwives was one of 10,000 Second English edition copies printed in Mexico in 1959. Originally written to accompany courses taught by Hemingway and Galt (both certified nurse midwives) in the Shanxi Province of China shortly after World War II, this edition was published in collaboration with the Inter-American Indian Institute (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano) in Mexico with funding from both UNICEF and the World Health Organization. Intended primarily for rural midwives without any previous education or training, the authors “endeavored to make it simple and understandable,” couching their arguments in “everyday popular language.” Taught in China, published in Spanish, English, Korean, and Portuguese, Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn reached a global market.

Drawing on archival material and interviews, this paper explores the unusual group of readers that transformed lay midwifery practice in the United States with the aid of this rural midwifery manual. Shortly after Santana purchased the book, she joined over two hundred followers of Stephen Gaskin on his 42-state speaking tour in a caravan of fifty-odd buses. Eleven babies were born on these buses with no doctor present and Santana’s midwifery manual as the only guide. Since then, these midwives have promoted a birthing style in their own midwifery guide, Spiritual Midwifery, which has sold over half a million copies and been translated into six languages. More than a decade before the first edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves would offer lay readers an accessible manual on women’s health that triggered a women’s health movement, Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn became a do-it-yourself tool that provided the necessary foundation for a burgeoning home birth movement.

Professor Kline is the author of two books: Bodies of Knowledge: Sexuality, Reproduction and Women's Health in the Second Wave (University of Chicago, 2010), and Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (University of California Press, 2001).

She has recently published articles in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine and the Journal of Women's History, and essays in Feminist Coalitions, Major Problems in American Women's History, and Popular Eugenics. She also has a chapter on the history of eugenics in America with Oxford University Press.

Professor Kline received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, in 1998, working under the direction of Karen Halttunen. Before joining the faculty at UC in 2000, Kline lived in Germany and taught the history of sexuality at the University of Munich. Kline is also a professional violinist and a member of two professional orchestras: The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and the Clermont Philharmonic.

This is a meeting of the Melbourne Feminist History Group.

Presenters: Dr Arnold Zable

We all have a story to tell, and the denial of the story can lead to despair. This despair is the age-old cry of the excluded. Drawing on his journey as a writer and as a human rights advocate, Zable will explore this cry in contemporary settings and recent history, and explore ways of enabling the excluded to have their cry heard, their stories told, and their anguish recognised.

Arnold Zable is an acclaimed writer, novelist, and human rights advocate. His books include Jewels and Ashes, The Fig Tree, Café Scheherazade, Scraps of Heaven, Sea of Many Returns and most recently, Violin Lessons, where he continues his exploration of exile and displacement in stories spanning the globe.

He has written extensively on human rights issues and has worked with asylum seekers, refugees, the deaf, problem gamblers, survivors of the Black Saturday bushfires and other groups using story as a means of self understanding. He has a doctorate from Melbourne University, where he is a Vice-Chancellor's fellow, and was recently awarded the Voltaire prize for human rights advocacy and the advancement of freedom of expression.

Discrimination and exclusion have long been strategies used by authorities to maintain authority and control. Fundamental to the success of such strategies, and ultimately also to their removal, is the role of emotion. The aim of this symposium is to explore an important stage in the European history of exclusion between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, a time when political and religious upheaval forced an unprecedented number of people to flee their homelands or to live in a state of internal exile. The symposium will focus on the use of emotions in the experience of exile and displacement, the stereotyping of the marginal and excluded, and conflicts over toleration.

List of speakers

• Daniel Barbu (University of Bern)
• Susan Broomhall (The University of Western Australia)
• Ole Peter Grell (The Open University, London)
• Yasmin Haskell (The University of Western Australia)
• David Van der Linden (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
• Dolly MacKinnon (The University of Queensland)
• Giuseppe Marcocci (Tuscia University and Scuola Normale of Pisa)
• John Marshall (Johns Hopkins University)
• Penny Roberts (The University of Warwick)
• Giovanni Tarantino (The University of Melbourne)
• María Tausiet (independent scholar, Madrid)
• Nick Terpstra (The University of Toronto)
• Edoardo Tortarolo (The University of Eastern Piedmont)
• Claire Walker (The University of Adelaide)
• Gary Waite (The University of New Brunswick)
• Paola von Wyss-Giacosa (The University of Zurich)
• Charles Zika (The University of Melbourne)

Presenters: Associate Professor Micol Seigel

The history of United States policing has suffered from the vogue for “history from below” and Foucauldian preferences for studying discipline in the abstract rather than actual agents of state power. At this juncture, much more work on the police takes place in the practically-focused social science discipline of criminology, where broad theoretical questions are largely neglected. This talk argues for a reinvigoration of the study of policing in the discipline of History, outlining the three central assumptions about the police that History as a field can challenge: that policing is local rather than federal or transnational; that policing is a public sector service rather than a private, market-oriented activity; and that policing is civilian rather than military in character. With these three assumptions productively troubled, the history of policing can turn the (re)tools of the discipline to the question of state power, a profoundly important task as US. imperial status in neoliberal market formations begins its precarious decline.

Micol Seigel is the Associate Professor in American Studies and History at Indiana University. She is also a Visiting Fellow in the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

Presenters: Dr Karen Jones

One strand in common sense thinking puts emotions entirely outside the scope of rationality assessment. Everyone has heard statements like, “But, that’s how I feel” - uttered as if that ended the conversation.

Emotions, we might think, are subjective in a way that puts them outside the scope of rationality assessment. But there is a contrasting strand in commonsense thinking, a strand that is loquacious in its criticism of our own and of others’ emotions. Jealousy can leap ahead of evidence; we can despair when yet there is ground for hope; we can be enraged by merely petty annoyances; our emotions can further our ends or function as “sand in the machinery of action.”

In this talk, Dr Jones examines this second strand in our commonsense thinking and argues that emotions are subject to a distinctive kind of rationality assessment and that we can, and should, strive to regulate our emotions so that we become emotionally rational.

Dr Karen Jones is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. She received her PhD in Philosophy from Cornell University. She has written extensively on trust, what it is, and when it is justified. She also writes on emotions and agency, and on moral epistemology. Much of her work is from a feminist perspective.

The past 20 years has witnessed a turn towards the sensuous, particularly the aural, as a viable space for critical exploration in History and other Humanities disciplines. This has been informed by a heightened awareness of the role that the senses play in shaping modern identity and understanding of place; and increasingly, how the senses are central to the memory of past experiences and their representation. The result has been a broadening of our historical imagination which has previously taken the visual for granted and ignored the other senses.

In this two day conference some of the ongoing issues in relation to the senses will be debated alongside charting the diversity of the field in Australia.

Speakers:

• Bruce Johnson (Macquarie University, Australia; University of Turku, Finland; Glasgow University, UK)
• Swati Chaterjee (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta)
• Diane Collins, Tanya Luckins (Deakin University)
• Penny Russell (University of Sydney)
• Maureen Atkinson (University of Northern British Columbia)
• David Goodman (University of Melbourne)
• Desley Deacon (ANU)
• Lauren Istvandity, (Griffith University)
• Ben Byrne, (UTS)
• Eva Rodriguez Riestra (City of Sydney)
• Mark E. Kehren (Loras College Dubuque, Iowa, USA)
  
• Joy Damousi, (University of Melbourne)
• Amanda Laugesen, (ANU)
• Vanessa Hearman, (University of Sydney)
• Ekaterina Zhiritskaya (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia)
• Paula Hamilton (UTS) Lisa Murray, (Sydney City Historian)
• John Charles Ryan (Edith Cowan University)
• Murray Goot, (Macquarie University)
• Sarah Barns (UTS)
• Cleo Mees (Macquarie University)
• Masha Mikola (RMIT)
• Kate Darian-Smith (University of Melbourne)
• Mathew Holmes (University of Melbourne)

Presenters: Professor Laura Marks

Mirror-touch synaesthetes are capable of extraordinary embodied responses to the world: an extreme empathy to other people and also to non-human and non-living things.

Nonsynaesthetes can also cultivate embodied and empathic responses to inorganic forms.

My case study is the “abstract line,” in Deleuze and Guattari’s term: a line that describes no figure but exhibits its own feeling qualities. Perceptual theories from the nineteenth century to the present suggest ways that humans can relate to a line, feel the way a line feels, even without projecting human qualities on it. Feeling like an abstract line, then, allows us to feel what we have in common with nonorganic life. Examples will be drawn from Islamic art, abstract painting, animation, and analog video synthesis.

Meanwhile, it’s important to critique the ways commercial applications are trying to instrumentalize human acts of perception and empathy.

Presenters: Professor Samuel Moyn

Against the background of the broader history of the idea of human rights, this lecture investigates when and why the contemporary field of 'global justice' in philosophy and political theory was invented. Returning to the engagement of American liberals with the decolonization process in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and even as more powerful tendencies were about to bring the welfarist ideal of the postwar era low, this lecture presents contemporary 'cosmopolitanism' as a response to a forgotten revolt of the global south against the prevailing economic order of our age.

Samuel Moyn, Professor, Harvard Law School, is the author of the acclaimed The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Harvard University Press, 2010). His recent works include Human Rights and the Uses of History (Verso Books, 2014) and the coedited volumes Rethinking Modern European Intellectual History (Oxford University Press, 2014) and The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). He is currently writing a history of human rights since the 1970s.

This Public Lecture is co-hosted by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at the Melbourne Law School and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies in the Faculty of Arts.

'Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Presenters: Dr Darrin Durant

What role should emotions and passions play, especially when expressed in the form of rhetorical speech, in political deliberation and public policy about science? Most acknowledge the relevance of emotional convictions to the political process itself and to evaluative assessments of politicized claims in general and scientific claims in particular. But given such widespread acknowledgement of the relevance of our emotional life to politics, one could argue it is rather curious to discover we in fact differ markedly about what to do with the emotions. Some view emotions as things to be controlled or eliminated.

A classic line of thought has always put emotions and reason on different sides of the deliberative fence. In modernity that classic opposition found a new lease of life in arguments putting emotions on a different side of the fence to technical rationalization. The classic emotions/reason divide still finds a home in many proposals for deliberative democracy, where emotions are often contrasted with public reasons we can all (possibly) agree upon. The modernity inspired version is most at home in positing a division between the way ordinary emotion-charged citizens engage with science and the way reasoned experts do science. But others view emotions as things to be harnessed and embraced.

The post-materialist thesis and inclusion-focused theorists of social movements each put emotions and reason on a continuum not a divide. Each point to emotion-laden quality-of-life issues as central to modernity, so that incorporating emotions into political deliberation and decision-making is central to promoting democratic designs. Applied to science, such arguments point to the need to focus on the emotions publics bring to their engagement with science if we are to have legitimate policy making about science. But is there anything really curious about this marked disagreement about what to do with the emotions? Spread out as it is across the ages but also within our own age? What happens if we move beyond defining emotions, and thus beyond any debate about emotions and reasons and whether they are on a continuum or a divide? What happens if we just treat emotions as a straight political resource and then ask who stands to gain or lose from prohibiting or deploying the resource? Can treating emotions as a straight political resource tells us something about both emotions and public policy about science? What significance might there be if emotions as a political resource do not have the same fate across diverse episodes of social conflict?

In this talk, Dr Durant tackles these questions, but be warned, he will do so by meandering his way through observations about things like vaccination, climate change, radiation protection and maybe even some windmills.

Dr Darrin Durant teaches social studies of science and technology in the unit for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne. Dr Durant's research focuses on the roles experts and lay publics can and should play in public policy debates and decisions involving technical knowledge. Bringing together social studies of knowledge with political philosophy, Dr Durant has an established reputation for theorizing the role of expertise in liberal democracies and for analyzing more specific conflicts between experts, publics and government. Dr Durant's empirical work has focused on conflicts about nuclear waste disposal, the politics of the nuclear power option, and energy policy writ large as a social choice about fossil fuels in an age of climate change. More recently Dr Durant has been looking at climate change issues and debates about epistemic justice.

Presenters: Dr Katherine Ellinghaus

Most scholarship that focuses on Native American people’s economic activity in the assimilation period tells a story of fraud and failure, and the policy of competency is often identified as the legislative culprit. A legal status which released the recipient from government supervision and allowed them to sell, mortgage or lease their allotted lands, competency was bestowed via the award of a paper certificate called a “fee patent.” Competent Indians were immediately at the mercy of unscrupulous white people who exploited them in various ways through schemes designed to get them to sell their land, and an enormous amount of land was transferred from Indian to white hands as a result. From this grim picture we might assume that being declared competent was almost always bad news for Native Americans, but was perhaps particularly bad for women who were less likely to have exposure to the world of business to protect them from unscrupulous whites.

In this presentation, Dr Katherine Ellinghaus draws from the detailed records of the Quapaw Agency in Oklahoma from the 1910s and 1920s to tell a different story. She explores how ideas about the limited abilities of Indian women and expectations about how they should behave influenced policy makers and agency officials, and then against this backdrop Dr Ellinghaus shows that the story of the impact of competency on Native Americans was not always completely bleak. Competency sometimes gave women great control over significant property, and the records of the Quapaw Agency show women who were skilled in business practices, in their negotiations with the Agency, and who were in control of both their finances and their destinies.

Dr Katherine Ellinghaus holds Monash Fellowship in the School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies. She has a PhD in history from the University of Melbourne, and was an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne from 2002 to 2006. Dr Ellinghaus' publications include Taking Assimilation to Heart: Marriages of White Women and Indigenous Men in the United States and Australia, 1887-1937 (University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

This is a meeting of the Melbourne Feminist History Group.

The Role of International Activism and National Leadership in Saving the Planet

Australia has a mixed record when it comes to international environmental policy-making. Widely acknowledged as a global leader on issues such as whaling and protecting the Antarctic environment, Australian governments have also lagged behind, or even stymied, international efforts to protect forests and to mitigate the effects of climate change. Why has Australia led in some areas, and fallen behind in others? This seminar aims to uncover aspects of the history of international environmentalism from an Australian perspective, using case studies to illuminate our chequered history of environmental achievement. What role, if any, have Australian activists, policy makers, diplomats and leaders played in saving our planet?

Professor Robyn Eckersley (School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne) explores the question of why Australia has mostly been a laggard in climate policy and climate diplomacy, and what needs to happen for this to change.

Dr Gerry Nagtzaam (Faculty of Law, Monash University) examines the role of Australia in securing a global moratorium on the commercial hunting of whales and in the recent International Court of Justice decision on 'scientific whaling'. He looks at its implications for the Australia/Japan relationship, the IWC and the whales.

Dr Brett Bennett (Institute for Culture and Society, the University of Western Sydney) examines the global movement of governments in putting large forests with perceived high conservation value into national parks or protected areas that are "locked" away from intensive logging and economic exploitation, and compares the mechanisms by which forests have been protected in the US and Australia.

Emma Shortis (School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, the University of Melbourne) discusses an unprecedented environmental achievement: the comprehensive protection of the Antarctic continent in the late 1980s and the role played by Australia in saving what Bob Hawke called "the one remaining pristine continent".

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor David Goodman

2014 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture & Inaugural Professorial Lecture

The Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture is a prestigious annual public lecture, organised by the History discipline in memory of Kathleen Fitzpatrick who taught in the History Department from 1939 to 1962.

Between September 1939 and December 1941, Americans participated in a heated and often bitter ‘great debate’ about the war in Europe and Asia. National isolationist and interventionist leaders, displaying varying levels of commitment to the principle that the nation’s foreign policy should be democratically decided, attempted to shape national public opinion. But in this lecture the focus is on local activists, on those ordinary Americans who expressed and shaped opinion on the war issue. Genealogical tools now make possible the location of some of these people in their family history, further illuminating the sometimes surprising connections between the social, cultural and political histories of the period.

David Goodman completed a BA (Hons.), Dip. Ed., and MA in History at the University of Melbourne, and a PhD in History at the University of Chicago. He taught at the University of Sydney 1986-89 and has taught at the University of Melbourne since 1990, first in Australian studies and then in American history.

His 1994 book Gold Seeking - Victoria and California in the 1850s was published by Allen and Unwin and Stanford University Press; his 2011 book Radio's Civic Ambition: American Broadcasting and Democracy in the 1930s was published by Oxford University Press. His most recent publications have been on the history of broadcasting in the United States; he is now completing a study of the local debate about American entry into World War 2 and researching a history of fortune telling in America.

Presenters: Professor Jeremi Suri

The American presidency is the most powerful political office in the world. Surprisingly, most contemporary presidents have found themselves severely constrained in their ability to pursue their chosen agendas for domestic and foreign policy change. This lecture will explain why, focusing on the nature of government bureaucracy, the range of American challenges and commitments, and the development of the modern media.

Jeremi Suri is the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin. Jeremi Suri is a leading expert on U.S. foreign policy.

He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Liberty's Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama (Free Press, 2011); Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Harvard University Press, 2007); and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Harvard University Press, 2005).

Presenters: Professor William Newman

Isaac Newton is known today as one of the most profound scientists to have ever lived. Newton's discoveries in physics, optics, and mathematics overturned a variety of fundamental beliefs about nature and reshaped science in ways that are still powerfully with us. But this is only part of Newton's fascinating story. Research over the last generation has revealed that the famous scientist spent over thirty years composing, transcribing, and expounding alchemical texts, resulting in a mass of papers totalling about a million manuscript words.

In fact, Newton seems to have considered himself one of an elite alchemical brotherhood, even going so far as to coin private anagrams of his name in the secretive custom of the sons of art. Despite our growing knowledge of Newton's deep involvement in alchemy, one basic question remains to be answered: why did the founder of Newtonian physics believe in alchemy, a discipline long viewed as discredited in the modern scientific world?

This lecture will attempt to arrive at an answer to that question by providing the evidence that led seventeenth-century thinkers to an acceptance of alchemical transmutation.

William R. Newman is a Distinguished Professor in the History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He received his Ph.D. in History of Science from Harvard University in 1986 and has published extensively on the history of matter-theory and on the history of early chemical technology. He has been awarded fellowships, grants, and prizes from a wide variety of foundations, such as the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, and the National Science Foundation.

Currently, Professor Newman's main research focus is on early modern “chymistry” and late medieval “alchemy,” especially as exemplified by Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Daniel Sennert and the first famous American scientist, George Starkey. He has taught courses on these subjects as well as courses on early science and its broader relationship to natural philosophy.

Presenters: Dr Dinah Eastop

Conservation responds to environmental, material and social change, including the emotive responses of people. Dr Eastop's presentation ooks at the response to garments concealed within the structure of buildings many years before recent discovery. She will draw on her work for the Deliberately Concealed Garments Project. She initiated this research project in 1998 to help preserve garments (and other artifacts) found hidden within the structure of buildings.

How such finds are treated post-discovery varies greatly, depending of many factors (e.g. their material form) and the responses they invoke in finders. In recognising the emotional responses of finders to these unusual objects, and the 'facts' of the 'life history' of these objects, this lecture opens up conservation within a network of affective relations across historical time and cultures.

Dr Dinah Eastop is an internationally renowned textile conservator, with over thirty years experience at the UK’s Textile Conservation Centre (TCC) and beyond, notably at ICCROM (the inter governmental conservation body based in Rome, Italy) and The National Archives [UK].

Presenters: Professor Irene Lemos

This lecture will look at the work of the craftsmen and artists of the period from 1200 to 700 BCE. Though Mycenaean architecture and art have been greatly admired and the Archaic and Classical Greek monuments, ceramics, and sculpture are well known and discussed, the achievements of the early Greek artists and craftsmen are less acknowledged and often even ignored. The lecture explores the ceramics, personal ornaments, tools, and buildings of the period and argues that the early Greek craftsmen and artists achieved and accomplished a lot during a period when much social and cultural change took place. Indeed, their skills and achievements pioneered the perception of what is considered to be Greek art.

Professor Lemos is the Director of the excavation at Lefkandi - Xeropolis, Euboea. She is a specialist in Early Greek Archaeology and Art; State formation in Early Greece from the Late Helladic IIIC to the Archaic period; Literacy; Late Bronze and Iron Age exchange patterns in the Mediterranean; and the archaeology of early Ionia.

This event is affiliated with the Classical Association of Victoria and the Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens.

Presenters: Dr Jürgen Förster

The Great War was long, painful, and costly. The Second World War was total and murderous. Both wars haunted the last century and haunt us still. The Second World War has commonly been portrayed as the foremost example of total warfare, while Blitzkrieg has been seen as the form of warfare that Germany waged between 1939 and 1942.

This lecture examines these two assumptions. Both terms originated in the interwar period and have since been used imprecisely by journalists, popular writers, politicians, soldiers, and historians. In Nazi Germany neither Blitzkrieg nor Total War represented a unified strategic concept or a body of coherent doctrine before 1939. It was the smashing German victory over France in the summer of 1940 that gave the term Blitzkrieg the status of doctrine.

Dr Jürgen Förster was educated at the Universities of Nottingham and Cologne and is an Honorary Fellow of Kathleen Lumley College, Adelaide. Affiliated with the German Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt for over thirty years, he now teaches military history at the University of Freiburg. He was a Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2004.

The Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation (CCMC) together with the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage and the School of History at Zhengzhou University, China will present their internationally significant research on cultural materials excavation, research and conservation in China.

The three organisations are internationally recognised institutes located in China’s material culture heartland and have investigated over 30,000 archaeological sites, including the tomb of the First Emperor of China and his terracotta army, the mausolea of Han and Tang emperors, as well as palace sites, Buddhist temples, kiln and bronze sites, and excavations from the neolithic period.

This one day event will include professorial papers from the three institutions and CCMC's cultural materials conservation projects in archaeological ceramics and metallurgy. CCMC has recently partnered with the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage and the School of History at Zhengzhou University, and this event will be a celebration of future plans. Come and hear these experts:

Professor Zhang Jianlin, Deputy Director, Shaanxi Province Institute of Archaeology, Tang Dynasty -Emperors’ tombs and their wall paintings

Dr Anding Shao , Vice-head of the Conservation Department, Shaanxi Province Institute of Archaeology , Qin Dynasty – the First Emperor’s bronze birds

Professor Ma Xiaolin, Deputy Director, Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, China’s largest zooarchaeological laboratory

Professor Han Guohe, Zhengzhou University: Dean, School of History, Director of Research Centre of Historical and Cultural Heritage Preservation, Eastern Han imperial tombs – preservation solutions in 21st century China

In recent times Pacific history has generated new interest among a range of historical researchers in Australia – see for example the new collection edited by David Armitage and Alison Bashford, Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) - even as fewer historians are employed to teach Pacific history in universities. At the same time it is clear that different kinds of Pacific history are now being written that have new implications for how Australian history is itself taught and understood. With a shift away from ethnographical approaches towards analytical frameworks that highlight transnational, imperial, and colonial histories we gain new understanding of the inter-connectedness, dynamics and power relations of regional and global histories that offer in turn new perspectives on and provoke new narratives about the Australian past and present. One study that pointed the way in this regard is Tracey Banivanua-Mar’s 2007 study Violence and Colonial Dialogue: The Australia-Pacific Labor Trade, (University of Hawai’i Press). Another – completely different - is Fiona Paisley’s 2009 book Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women's Pan-Pacific (also University of Hawai’i Press).

This symposium brings together historians from around Australasia, engaged in historical research on the Pacific, many enjoying ARC Research Fellowships, to share and discuss their new work within these shifting historiographical frameworks.

Presenters include: Professor Warwick Anderson, Professor Alison Bashford, Dr Sarah Walsh, and Dr Christine Winter (The University of Sydney) Dr Ingrid Sykes and Dr Tracey Banivanua Mar (La Trobe University) Dr Claire Lowrie, Associate Professor Julia Martínez and Dr Frances Steele (University of Wollongong) Dr Katerina Teaiwa and Dr Patricia O'Brien (Australian National University) Dr Angela Wanhalla (The University of Otago)

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

This one day event will be based on a conversation between the Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD) and the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material (AICCM) on the recently issued AICCM Interim Guidelines for environmental conditions in museums and galleries, with contributions from the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation (CCMC), University of Melbourne, and representatives from Southeast Asian museums.

The aim is to evaluate best practice for museum environments and the diversity of their collections whilst balancing the care of cultural materials in the face of sustainability. Will there be any discussion with the audience?

Four sessions will cover the following, three based around a dialogue between two protagonists:

• International standards and local needs – the current situation

• Building envelope and sustainability – exploring the environmental drivers and the current reality

• Diverse collections, environments and research evidence - speakers from national collecting organisations in Southeast Asia will provide brief presentations on the issues within their own countries’ contexts, followed by University of Melbourne research findings.

• A better framework for discussion and exchange - how to draw in professions across the museum sector

Interactive Q&A Panel Discussion

This event is hosted by the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Melbourne School of Government and is in addition to the ICOM-CC 17th Triennial Conference being held this year in Melbourne from 15 to 19 September 2014.

The theme of ICOM-CC’s 17th Triennial Conference is Building Strong Culture through Conservation. By preserving cultural materials essential to the continuation of collective memory, conservation helps rebuild communities which have been damaged through war, natural disaster, or displacement, and contributes to the identity of thriving communities. Access to cultural material directly contributes to what Amartya Sen describes as ‘functionality’ - giving individuals the tools we need to understand our place in the world, and ‘capability’ - giving us the ability to make choices about our place in the world. When people have access to their cultural material they are able to participate in assessment of their history and historical position, understand where their knowledge was derived from, build educational foundations, and engage creatively in the future. These are very much the hallmarks of social inclusion that contributes to social transformation. However, culture remains a silent partner in many significant international development agendas, such as the Millennium Development Goals and is often the gilding rather than the core of international government programs.

This Q&A will explore the intersection of culture and international development by grappling with the following questions:

• How might we measure the impact of culture on international development?

• Who are the key actors in cultural development and whose interests do they serve?

• How does ‘strong culture’ assist economic development and social resilience?

• In what ways can development strategies incorporate principles and practices of cultural conservation?

• How do communities manage generational shifts in how culture is valued and transmitted?

Expert Panellists

• Professor Lyndal Prott, Director of UNESCO's Division of Cultural Heritage

• Estelle Parker , Deputy State Director, Victoria State Office, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), Australia.

• Luis da Costa Ximenes, Director of Belun, and Emilio Vicente Noronha, Project Manager of Belun

• Moderated by Associate Professor Robyn Sloggett, Director of the Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation (CCMC) and the Co-Chair of the 17th Triennial Conference of the International Council of Museums Committee for Conservation (ICOM-CC), Building Strong Culture Through Conservation

Gender, Sexuality and Intimacy in Australia’s 1980s by Associate Professor Frank Bongiorno

The 1980s has been widely recognised as a period of significant and rapid change in Australian life; Paul Kelly called his near-contemporary account of the period’s politics The End of Certainty. Historians of homosexuality have been prominent in interpreting the era, notably in connection with the AIDS crisis, the development of a gay commercial culture, and the rise of the gay media. But the period’s significance for the wider history of gender and sexuality remains uncertain, for most commentators have so far been reluctant to move beyond narrating high politics and public culture. Here, Associate Professor Bongiorno will sketch out the treatment of the themes of gender, sexuality and intimacy in a book he is writing on Australia between 1983 and 1991. While some commentators at the time thought that they detected a backlash against the libertarian values of sexual revolution, Associate Professor Bongiorno explores the alternative idea of the 1980s as part of a continuing transformation that reshaped the intimate life and its representation in public discourse in the late twentieth century. This is more a story of continuity than rupture, of a ‘revolution’ accomplished rather than one ‘betrayed’.

Postsecular Sex? The New Christian Right and Sex in Australia since the 1970s by Dr Tim Jones

From the early 1970s, conservative Christian engagement with politics was revitalised through the formation and reorganisation of a number of lobby groups. These New Christian Right (NCR) groups, including the Festival of Light, were formed to combat changes in Australian sexual mores. Of particular concern were changes to censorship, and the growing acceptance of feminism and gay liberation. Commentators saw the rise of the NCR as a sign of resurgent fundamentalism, a reversal of secularism, or as an incursion of US religious politics into secular Australia. This paper analyses the rise of the NCR through a postsecular lens. Rather than reading the emergence of the NCR as a reaction against sexual change, it shows how the NCR was constituted through sexual contests and how the ‘religious’ became implicated in subsequent sexual change in Australia.

“Jewish+Lesbian= ‘Jesbian’” by Dr Jordy Silverstein

At the beginning of 2014, Leah and Amanda became one of the first pairs of Jewish lesbians to have a Jewish wedding in Melbourne. Held at the Abbotsford Convent and officiated by a Reform rabbi, this ceremony was a Jewish religious ceremony that had no relationship to the Australian state. In this ceremonial search for a ritual that would be true to themselves, would express their love, and would produce a sense of communal ‘normality’, dominant discourses of both Jewish and Australian marriages were simultaneously challenged and reinforced.

In this paper Dr Silverstein will explore the ways that Leah and Amanda articulated their experience in an oral history interview conducted a few months after their wedding. Through this one example some of the broader complexities of studying Australian histories of sexuality at this moment in time will be canvassed. When discussions of normativity - whether homo or hetero - dominate many discussions, what can be offered by a historicisation of that 'normativity'? This paper will offer one response, by delving into this one example from the oft-forgotten sexual histories of migrant and religious minority groups.

This is a meeting of the Melbourne Feminist History Group.

Presenters: Professor Michael Devitt

The 2014 Barry Taylor and David Lewis Philosophy Lecture

According to “realism about the external world”, the known physical world of stones, trees, cats, and the like exist independently of our minds. This seems to be the very heart of commonsense and yet most of the great philosophers, and many of the most influential contemporary ones, have been antirealists in one way or another. Antirealism was also rife in the twentieth century among intellectuals of a philosophical bent, including postmodernists, social scientists, literary theorists, and feminists. Why is antirealism a hazard of philosophy?

A clear answer shines through from the history. A realist metaphysics leaves a “gap” between our minds and the physical world. The gap is then thought to make our knowledge of that world impossible. Realism, Berkeley thought, is “the very root of scepticism”. In recent times, this epistemological line of thought has spawned a semantic one: realism makes reference to the known world impossible. The response to these alleged problems for realism has been “idealism”: the known world is held to be mind-dependent, whether in a way first proposed by Berkeley or, much more commonly, a way first proposed by Kant. Yet these idealist metaphysics are truly bizarre. Something has gone seriously wrong. What?

Devitt shall argue that the alleged problems for realism arise from starting in the wrong place. Rather than starting with epistemology or semantics and deriving antirealist metaphysics, we should start with realism and derive realist epistemologies and semantics.

Michael Devitt’s main research interests are in the philosophy of language, philosophy of linguistics, philosophy of mind, realism, and methodological issues prompted by naturalism. He received his BA from the University of Sydney (1966) and his PhD from Harvard University (1972). He is now a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Before that he taught at the University of Maryland (1988-1999) and the University of Sydney (1971-1987).

He has published the following books: Designation (1981); Realism and Truth (1984/1991/1997); Language and Reality (with Kim Sterelny, 1987/1999); Coming to Our Senses (1996); The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language (co-edited with Richard Hanley, 2006); Ignorance of Language (2006); Putting Metaphysics First (2010).

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Aldo Setaioli

Seneca, the tutor and advisor of the Roman emperor Nero, left behind a wide range of philosophical writings. The first goal of Seneca’s philosophy is the therapy of the soul - in other words, the moral progress of the reader as well as of the writer himself. This is a process entailing several stages. The philosophical therapist will first address the emotions of the reader still far removed from wisdom and reason; he will then encourage ascetical ‘exercises’, and finally he will be able to appeal to reason. An important role in this spiritual progress is also played by reading.

Aldo Setaioli is Professor Emeritus of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Perugia (Italy). He has published widely in the area of Latin literature, never losing sight of Greek antecedents and devoting special attention to such authors as Catullus, Virgil and his commentators, Horace, Seneca, and Petronius. His research interests have been in the philosophical and allegorical interpretations of classical myth and poetry, as well as afterlife beliefs in the Greek and Roman world down to late antiquity.

This public lecture and Professor Setaioli's visit are sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria (CAV); the Australasian Society for Classical Studies (ASCS); the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies (SOPHIS) of Monash University; and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS) at the University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Professor Philip Hardie

The establishment of the Augustan regime presents itself as the assertion of order and rationality in the political, ideological and artistic spheres: the rule of Apollo after the Dionysiac excesses of Antony, the calming of the madness of civil war. A standard reading of the Aeneid focuses on the poem’s attempt to put an end to the furor of civil war in the name of ratio and pietas, but also registers Virgil’s acknowledgement of the impossibility of ensuring the lasting rule of reason over madness.

The ‘classical’, Apollonian, poetry of the Augustan period retains a fascination with the irrational. The elegiac poets both regret and celebrate their enslavement to an erotic frenzy that may have implications for their wider commitment to the Augustan project. Horace in the Odes is torn between Callimachean restraint and Dionysiac abandonment. Dulce est desipere in loco may be an anodyne formula to paper over a less easily contained attraction to the intoxication of madness. This lecture examines the ways in which the irrational manifests itself in texts by these and other authors, across the generic range of Augustan poetry, and will explore the strategies by which the irrational is suppressed or contained, with attention to the wider political, cultural and religious contexts of the period.

Philip Hardie is a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, Honorary Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Formerly he was Corpus Christi Professor of Latin Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. Professor Hardie is a prolific and and highly influential researcher in the field of Roman republican and early imperial poetry, having published widely on Virgil, Ovid, Lucretius and other Latin poets. He has also worked extensively and imaginatively on the classical tradition, including his most recent monograph, The Last Trojan Hero: a Cultural History of Virgil's Aeneid.

Presenters: Professor Ross Gibson

In a poem entitled 'Greeting', John Shaw Neilson calls out to his readers: 'What of the wind? Who knows the weather? Shall we be old men in the street'. Re-reading this recently Ross Gibson was thrown to an instant in one of his favourite films, called Lost Book Found by Jem Cohen. The film is a kind of street-history of New York City as if dreamed by a mendicant monk. There's a moment in it that resonates to Neilson's poem: jostled by crowds and basted with evening light, the camera seems to be drifting down a Manhattan street when a vagrant hustles up from the crowd that is surging along.

As this old man passes he looks down the lens for a blink and mutters, 'I'm in love with the world'. Lasting no more than a heatbeat, the moment gleams as part epiphany part mystery. And it grants the viewer a new understanding of the verve and bluster in the city that Cohen is examining.

The way thought and memory work, this little montage might zap you into thinking about Greg Dening. As many things do. Here is the intellectual intimacy so characteristic of Greg, plus the sense of love and wonder for the thing being investigated, and the roundabout ways one can feel how everything alters, or should, in any encounter between oneself and the world.

In this year's Greg Dening lecture, Gibson brings a similar spirit of inquiry to his account of an archive that he is currently studying, alongside a multi-disciplinary team of artists and historians. The archive is a collection of films that have been compiled by three generations of a farming family in the Wimmera, which is John Shaw Neilson's country, as well as Djab Wurrung and Jardwadjali country. The archive is a record of inter-generational and multi-modal custodianship that leads us into history, into country, into the relationships meshing people, things and the lively world. Greg Dening would have loved it. Gibson and his collaborators are trying to do it justice. Which, he notes, is like trying to know the weather.

Ross Gibson is Centenary Professor in Creative & Cultural Research at the University of Canberra. Recent works include The Summer Exercises (2009) and 26 Views of the Starburst World (2012), both books published by UWAP.

Presenters: Professor Armelle Le Bras-Chopard

Professor Armelle Le Bras-Chopard will discuss the history of exclusion of women from the political sphere and on the ways that women have invested the political sphere through mechanisms such as quotas or, particularly in France, parity. She will also examine the problem of equal opportunity from her first-hand experience as National EO Director for Higher Education.

Professor Armelle Le Bras-Chopard worked on early socialism and women in a study of the early socialist Pierre Leroux, before she moved on to a number of issues of gender and politics. She was Professor and, from 1991 to 2001, Head of Political Science at Université de Versailles/Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, and then National EO Director for Secondary Education in France until her retirement in 2009.

Her books include (English translations of the titles): Equality in difference: the socialism of Pierre Leroux, Paris, Presses de la FNSP, 1986; Women and politics (ed. with J.Mossuz-Lavau), Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997; The masculine, the sexual and the political, Paris, Plon, 2004; The Devil’s Whores: Women’s witchcraft trials, Paris, Plon, 2006; First Lady, second role, Paris Seuil, 2009.

Presenters: Professor JD Hill

The BBC/British Museum series and book ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ brought international attention to the increasing importance of things to the exploration of human history and experience. Widely copied, taking 100, 50, or 10 things to explore a topic has become common in museums, galleries and popular history publishing, but also has much to offer academia. JD Hill, who led the team that helped British Museum Director Neil MacGregor make this major series, reflects on how this particular history was made, and on the wider issues that face researchers and museum professionals when they place things at the heart of their research and engagement with wider audiences.

JD Hill is Head of Research for the British Museum, where he both leads the Museum's own research and oversees relationships with higher education and research funders. In this role he has been actively involved in how relationships between universities and cultural institutions have developed in the UK with the increasing importance of 'impact', including its measurement. Originally an archaeologist, he was lead curator for the BBC/British Museum ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ project and is Professor at Large at the University of Western Australia.

An initiative of The McCoy Project, a research collaboration between the University of Melbourne and Museum Victoria.This lecture is supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia.

Presenters: Professor A.G. Hopkins

Globalisation envelops the world - and historians too. The 'g' word is now mandatory in titles of books and articles; PhD students follow their leaders in dedicating their dissertations to the subject. Yet, not so long ago postmodern approaches to the past were equally compelling: if you could not tell your trope from your alterity and your Spivak from your Bhaba, your chances of landing a job were minimal. Wise investors buy at the bottom of the market and get out at the top. So, it is worth asking whether shares in globalisation have further to run or whether full value is already in the market. One way of answering the question is by considering the reasons why historiographical phases, like empires, rise, flourish and decline. This approach provides pointers to the current state of globalisation studies and offers an estimate of the current value of the shares. The advice comes with a wealth warning; past performance has limited predictive power. As a famous trumpeter remarked when asked which way jazz was going: 'Man, if I knew which way jazz was going, I would be there already!'

Professor A.G. Hopkins is Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge (where he held the Smuts Chair from 1994-2001) and an Emeritus Fellow of Pembroke College. Between 1977 and 1988 he was Professor of Economic History at the University of Birmingham and from 1988 until 1994 Professor of History at the University of Geneva. From 2002 to 2013 he held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Hopkins is best known for his extensive work on the history of Africa, empires, and globalization.

His principal works include An Economic History of West Africa (1973), Globalization in World History (2002), Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Global (2006), and, with Peter Cain, British Imperialism, 1688-2000 (1993), which won the Forkosch Prize awarded by the American Historical Association in 1995. His contribution to the field was recognised in 2011 with Africa, Empire and Globalization: Essays in Honour of A.G.Hopkins,edited by Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell. He is currently completing a study of the United States written as imperial history.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor Piroska Nagy

Barbara Rosenwein elaborated the notion of emotional communities as a way of explaining the affective dimension of social and cultural groups. But how is an ‘emotional community’ born? Exploring a famous case from medieval religious history, Professor Piroska Nagy will test the hypothesis according to which shared emotional events or processes can induce the formation of an emotional or affective community.

One of the best known episodes in the life of saint Francis of Assisi is his celebration of Christmas in 1223 in the little town of Greccio. The episode is told in detail by Thomas of Celano in his first biography written in 1228-29. Later sources on Francis report the episode differently, according to their particular agenda ; and it is also included in the iconographic cycles that depict Francis’s life. Nagy’s aim in this presentation is firstly, to analyse the work of emotions in the creation of communal feeling, through the careful observation of what happened in Greccio according to the first sources, and how they can be understood within the context of Franciscan history ; and secondly, to show how the transformation of the episode in later sources reveals what can be called a Franciscan politics of emotion.

Piroska Nagy is currently professor of medieval history at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), after having taught at the Université Paris I, the Université des Antilles et de la Guyane, Université de Rouen and the Central European University. She is author of Le don des larmes au Moyen Age. Un instrument spirituel en quête d’institution, Ve-XIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 2000) and co-author, with Damien Boquet, of Sensible Moyen Age. Une histoire culturelle des émotions et de la vie affective dans l'Occident médiéval, (Paris: Seuil, forthcoming in 2015).

This seminar explores the engagement of Australian academics with international scholarly networks from the early twentieth century. Through two case studies, the involvement of Australian academics in World War I and the contribution of American philanthropists to Australian anthropology, it will examine the influence of these networks on the development of the Australian university.

The Rockefeller Foundation and Australian Anthropology Professor Julia Horne (The University of Sydney) explore the Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in Australian anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s. This presentation examines the structures established for the international movement and exchange of ideas and their impact on power and knowledge as both empowering yet - as studies of cultural imperialism have shown - also encumbered with imperial legacies.

Khaki Common Room - presented by Dr Tamson Pietsch (The University of Sydney).
When war was declared in August 1914, the universities across Australia responded enthusiastically, passing regulations. But the attempt to utilise the expertise of these academic volunteers was, both in Britain and Australia, initially very limited. It was not until the first waves of mustard gas were used to devastating effect on the Western Front in April 1915 that it became evident to them that the war would be fought by chemists and engineers as much as by soldiers and sailors. But where was this expertise to be found? This presentation examines the networks that took Australian academics into the heart of British wartime science, and saw them assume leadership of key fields such as chemistry, mining and physics.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe. Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the History of the University Unit.

Human rights pressures on the Olympic Games have risen dramatically in the last decade. In the 20th century, such pressures were largely limited to ensuring nondiscrimination for athletes; now, demands extend to host country treatment of minorities, labour laws, freedom of the press, and more. Leading human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International now devote substantial resources to researching and publicising human rights issues associated with the Games, fueling media interest and public awareness.

The symposium brings together academics, representatives of sports organisations, and human rights advocates to discuss growing human rights concerns in relation to the Olympic Games. Among the questions to be discussed are:

• Should the Olympic Games promote human rights, and if so, which rights matter, for whom, and why?

• Why have the Olympic Games become a target for human rights groups?

• How has the "Olympic movement" responded to this pressure?

• What is Australia's responsibility with respect to the human rights issues that affect the Olympics?

• What can we expect to see in the future?

Presenters include: Barbara Keys, The University of Melbourne, Soyoung Kwon, International Sports Relations Foundation, Kristine Toohey, Griffith University, Nicholas Bequelin, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch, Patrick Kelly, University of Chicago and Helen Lenskyj, University of Toronto

To view the full program, please click here.

Presenters: Professor Susan Smulyan

The opportunity to work on the Australian Research Council (ARC) grant “Globalising the Magic System” pushed Professor Susan Smulyan to think (again) about both transnational and advertising history and how we research and tell these stories. The sources for advertising history present challenges as advertising agencies, both like and unlike other businesses, refuse access to sources seen as valuable to, or destructive of, the agency’s “brand.” Oral histories, trade journals, and agency archives present a partial, and sometimes unexpected, history of the influence of American advertising agencies within the Australian industry, as well as influence that goes the other way. They push us to consider (again) the competing claims of the British and American culture industries on the Australian mind.

Susan Smulyan currently serves as the director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown. Professor Smulyan is a cultural historian of the United States in the twentieth century with a special interest in advertising, and the author of two books: Selling Radio: The Commercialization of American Broadcasting (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Popular Ideologies: Mass Culture at Mid-Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) and the co-editor, with Kathleen Franz, of Major Problems In American Popular Culture (Cengage, 2011).

Professor Smulyan is a Partner Investigator on the ARC-funded project "Globalising the Magic System: a History of Advertising Industry Practices in Australia, 1959-1989", which is based in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Professor Smulyan's keynote lecture will be followed by the Symposium "Globalising the Magic System" (12pm - 5pm).

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by The Cultural History of Economies Research hub (CHERHub) and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor James Chandler

Long before James Joyce brought his allusive novelistic craft to bear on the Odyssey, another Irish novelist, likewise practiced in the art of allusion, Maria Edgeworth, made extensive reference to the Homeric story in perhaps her most important prose narrative,The Absentee (1812).

In considering the specific appeal of this story for the Irish in this period, Professor James Chandler will look carefully at Edgeworth's Homeric framing of absenteeism in the context of her explicitly Burkean theory of allusion and includes some reflections on James Barry's enigmatic portrait of Burke and himself in the role of Ulysses and one of his companions.

Professor James Chandler is Barbara E. & Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service Professor at the Departments of English and of Cinema and Media Studies in the University of Chicago. He is Director of the Franke Institute for the Humanities and Co-Director of the Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture. His most recent book is An Archaeology of Sympathy: The Sentimental Mode in Literature and Cinema (University of Chicago Press, 2013). An internationally renowned scholar of Romanticism, Professor Chandler has had a long-standing interest in modern Irish literature and culture.

This Public Lecture is supported by the Gerry Higgins Trust for Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts.

Presenters: Professor Ute Frevert

The politics of honour, shame, and humiliation are highly significant for the study of emotions in international relations. They stretch over a long period and tread a path through quite diverse structural settings, from the era of early modern state-building under the auspices of absolutist rule to the era of strong nationalism and nation-building in conditions of constitutional government and universal suffrage.

In the course of this development we can trace how the affective quality and intensity of honour and shame concepts increase. In the background of this development the state is personified by the monarch (and his or her family), and the nation identifies itself with that monarch (and his or her family). This personification greatly enhances emotional dynamics and plays a vital role in international relations, especially during the age of high imperialism.

Professor Ute Frevert is Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where she directs the Center for the History of Emotions. She is one of the world's leading historians of emotion. Her many books in German and English include Emotions in History - Lost and Found (2011) and Emotional Lexicons (2014).

Presenters: Dr K.O Chong-Gossard

The ancient Athenians acted out the stories of their legendary kings and princesses every spring during their dramatic festival, the Dionysia. These tragedies have remained at the core of Western literature because they continue to be relevant in every age. This lecture looks at a lesser-known and fragmentary play, 'Euripides Hypsipyle', whose female characters make extreme choices in the face of extraordinary misfortunes.

It is the only known ancient tragedy to dramatise the accidental death of an infant through the negligence of his nursemaid. It is also one of the few tragedies in which a woman - in this case, the infant's mother - is persuaded not to seek revenge for the death of her family. Through both positive and negative examples, the heroines of Greek tragedy can even today teach us life lessons about grief, endurance, and forgiveness.

Dr K.O. Chong-Gossard is a senior lecturer in Classics at The University of Melbourne, and is known to most of you as the Honorary Secretary of the Classical Association of Victoria. He is the author of "Gender and Communication in Euripides' Plays: Between Song and Silence" (Brill 2008), co-editor (with AJ Turner and FV Vervaet) of "Private and Public Lies: the Discourse of Despotism in the Graeco-Roman World" (Brill 2010), and author of numerous articles on Greek drama, as well as ancient language pedagogy. He has over 200 teddy bears in his office, and owns two cats that demand most of his attention.

Presenters: Professor Joy Damousi

Australia has played a major role internationally in offering humanitarian assistance to child refugees over several decades. This lecture will consider Australia’s relationship to the world through an analysis of the history of assisting, accepting or rejecting child refugees and the institutions and organisations that have played a role in these processes. This knowledge is pertinent as it enables an exploration of the veracity of the general perception that Australians today are more enlightened with respect to humanitarian issues regarding child refugees than those of the past. An analysis of past histories can contextualise and inform current policies and practices and allow us to examine Australia’s current international role on refugee and migration issues more broadly.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Dr Charlotte Greenhalgh

What has it felt like to inhabit an ageing body in the past? This lecture analyses the treatment of age in high fashion magazines, older women’s use of make-up, and the grooming habits of Britons who were aged over 60, in order to highlight some of the pleasures of ageing, and to suggest how mid-century fashion and beauty culture operated in the lives of its older consumers. Dr Charlotte Greenhalgh argues that the marginality of the old and the abjection of the ageing body are historically specific dimensions of fashion and beauty culture that were catalysed by the youth-centric nature of mid-1960s popular culture. Older men and women were celebrated in fashion and beauty culture of the preceding decades in ways that have not been recognised, in part because twenty-first-century historians are the inheritors of the particular age-conscious gaze that developed during the 1960s.

This research presents a fresh perspective on the historical dimensions of physiological ageing and underlines the visibility and significance of older people in mid-century British life.

Presenters: Professor Catherine Hall

How did ideas about race develop across Britain and Australia in the early nineteenth century? Much attention has been paid to the movement for abolition and emancipation, less to the pro-slavers who made sustained efforts, with some considerable success, to defend 'their' property and their interests. In this lecture, Professor Catherine Hall will make the argument that the interventions of British and Caribbean slave-owners in the debates over the slave trade and slavery between the 1770s and the 1830s were critical to the ways in which race came to be understood in Britain. Catherine will explore some connections between these slave-owners and their descendants and the white settlers who made Australia their home in the early nineteenth century.


Presenters: Professor Joy Damousi, Professor Marilyn Lake

Professor Joy Damousi and Professor Marilyn Lake will reflect upon their ground breaking publication Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century which was first published in 1995.

Presenters: Professor Kai Brodersen

In classical sources, the Cheruscan military leader Arminius is mentioned as an obstacle to Roman expansion in the early 1st century AD who eventually fell victim to a revolt in his own tribe. Professor Kai Brodersen will explore how the perception of this figure changed to make him the mythical founder of a united German nation in the 19th century.

Professor Brodersen is a distinguished ancient historian, President of the University of Erfurt, and currently resides at the University of Western Australia as the inaugural Margaret Braine Fellow.

His research focuses on Greek and Roman historiography and geography, on ancient inscriptions, oracles and wonder-texts, and on the social and economic history as well as reception studies.

Presenters: Professor Ron Tappy

The near-30-dunam site of Tel Zayit lies in the strategic Beth Guvrin Valley, roughly halfway between Lachish to the south and Tell es-Safi (Gath of the Philistines) to the north. Although this area generally belonged to the lowlands district of ancient Judah, it lay in an often-contested zone wherein cultural and certainly political associations might shift from time to time, primarily between the highlands to the east and the coastal plain to the west. This lecture will outline the enduring status of Tel Zayit’s strategic position as a borderland community.

The presentation will draw on historical, textual, and archaeological evidence from three different periods in the 3,500-year depositional history of the tell that amply demonstrate the betwixt-and-between nature of daily life that the inhabitants surely understood.

The collage includes: Tel Zayit’s shifting allegiances during the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, its fate in the wake of Sennacherib’s Third Campaign in 701 BCE, and its service to the Romans as a fortified outpost following the reign of Hadrian.

Presenters: Professor Philip Pettit

We do good to one another by bringing about welcome consequences and, in particular, by bringing about welcome consequences that are disposition-dependent. Thus we give one another respect by acting out of the beneficent disposition not to interfere in one another’s personal choices: by ensuring that we conform to standards of respect in our behavior. But while we do evil to one another by bringing about unwelcome consequences, these are rarely disposition-dependent: they do not require that we act out of a maleficent disposition or that we conform to standards of malice in our behavior. This observation helps to explain the Knobe effect whereby we ascribe intentionality more readily to presumptively bad actions than to good. Thus to help the environment requires acting out of a helpful disposition, ensuring that you conform to beneficent standards. To harm the environment requires only that you create an environmental cost, breaching those standards: it does not require that you act out of the disposition of an environmental vandal, ensuring that you conform to a vandal’s standards.

Philip Pettit is L.S.Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the ANU.

Presenters: Dr David Pritchard

This lecture will calculate the public spending of classical Athens. The major public activities of the Athenian dēmos were the staging of religious festivals, the conducting of politics and the waging of wars. There is hot debate about what was spent on these three public activities. Ancient historians cannot agree whether the dēmos spent more on festivals or wars. They debate how the classical Athenians paid for their democracy. These debates go back to the first book on Athenian public finance. August Böckh famously criticised the Athenians for wasting money on their festivals instead of building up their armed forces. His book argued too that their decision to pay themselves to run the democracy forced them to tax unjustly the subjects of their empire. Calculating what they spent on their public activities would settle both debates. Böckh lacked the evidence to do such. Two centuries later this is no longer the case. But in calculating public spending this paper does more than settle longstanding debates.

2015 marks the bicentenary of Napoleon’s historic defeat at Waterloo, as well as the tragic heroism of the ANZACs at Gallipoli. It is also a year marked, and marred, by ongoing conflicts such as the Ukraine crisis and the Islamic State/Daesh insurgency in the Middle East. Against this historical background, the School runs an engaging and exciting interdisciplinary lecture series, taking different approaches to the Conflict theme across the boundaries of space and time, from classical antiquity to present day, catering to an equally diverse audience of community enthusiasts, students and scholars, and aimed at engendering a stimulating debate around issues addressed.

Presenters: Ms Jane Milosch

This lecture will give an overview of the Smithsonian Institution’s Provenance Research Initiative. As a leader within the area of provenance research and theory, Jane Milosch (Director, Provenance Research Initiative) is an unparalleled example to curators and the wider museum sector. Provenance research provides a powerful lens through which to look at and learn about art, the history of collecting, and museums. The Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative (SPRI) aims to expand its focus beyond the WWII era, to assist with current provenance issues, and to explore the implications of provenance research for art history and connoisseurship. We anchor the museum in its core missions: stewardship, education, and appreciation of all cultures.

Presenters: Sheila O'Connell

This lecture for the S.T. Gill and the Colonial World conference will be presented by the Australian institute of Art History at the University of Melbourne, in partnership with State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Rare Book Week and supported by the Gordon Darling Foundation.

Sheila O'Connell will deliver the keynote address of the conference as free of charge public lecture.

George Cruikshank lived a series of artistic lives. His first successes as a printmaker were satires on the war with Napoleon, he blossomed as the illustrator/collaborator of the early novels of Charles Dickens, and he spent his last years as a temperance campaigner using new technology to produce prints that could be published cheaply across the world, from London to New York to Sydney. This lecture will outline Cruikshank's development in the context of changes in British society and in the art world in particular.It will concentrate on the early part of his career when, barely out of his teens, Cruikshank became the most successful graphic satirist of the generation following James Gillray.

This was the great age of British visual satire and the best of Cruikshank's prints can still raise a laugh even when their subject matter is obscure to most modern audiences. But he always worked under commercial pressure and these early caricatures sometimes attack one side of the political divide and sometimes the other – thus incidentally allowing us access to a range of attitudes to the events of the turbulent wartime and post-war years. Cruikshank's long career spanned a period of enormous change. His prints demonstrate how the nineteenth century saw the British print market change its focus from the elite to the mass market as technology made production cheaper, education and increasing literacy widened the interests of the population as a whole, and the effects of industrialisation and expanding urbanisation called for social reform.

This conference will present a series of papers and discussions focusing on the art, life and times of the 19th century Australian artist S.T. Gill.

Speakers will include:
Emeritus Professor Sasha Grishin, SLV Honorary Fellow and Guest Curator of Australian Sketchbook: Colonial life and the art of S.T. Gill
Associate Professor David Hansen, Centre for Art History and Art Theory, Australian National University
Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, National Gallery of Australia
Angus Trumble, Director, National Portrait Gallery
Daniel Thomas, art historian and curator
Dr Isobel Crombie, Assistant Director, National Gallery of Victoria
Alisa Bunbury, Curator, National Gallery of Victoria
Associate Professor Alison Inglis, University of Melbourne
Shane Carmody, University of Melbourne
Professor Andrew J. May, University of Melbourne

Presenters: Professor Xu Guoqi

The Kathleen Fitzpatrick Annual History Lecture will explain China's important role in the Great War and how the Great War affected China's national development and its position in the world. It will highlight 140,000 Chinese workers' extraordinary journey to France and the Chinese heroic fight at the Postwar peace conference.

Xu Guoqi is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong and is the author of China and The Great War. From 2014-16, Professor Xu spends part of the year teaching and researching in History program at the University of Melbourne under the Asia Scholar's Scheme.

The prestigious Kathleen Fitzpatrick History Lecture honours the memory of Kathleen Fitzpatrick (1905-1990). A former Associate Professor in History from 1948, Kathleen was an inspiring teacher and formidable scholar who pioneered the participation of women in academic life. See: http://shaps.unimelb.edu.au/history/notable-historians

Presenters: Professor Samuel Fleischacker

This talk explores Adam Smith's conception of empathy (roughly, what he called "sympathy"), and its connection, for him, with our understanding of our selves. This lecture will begin with a comparison between Smith and David Hume on sympathy, move to the role of perspective-taking in Smith's discussion of the subject, then look at the degree to which empathy, and perspective-taking, figure in our construction of our identity, for Smith. Professor Fleischacker concludes by suggesting that Smith introduces a new conception of humanity by way of his view of empathy.

Samuel Fleischacker is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago

This lecture is supported by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Image source: Tor Ben Mayor's Film "Two Sided Story", produced by The Parents Circle Families Forum - Bereaved Palestinian and Israeli Families with The Israeli production company '2SHOT' and the Palestinian news agency 'Maan'.

Presenters: Associate Professor Timothy Lynch, Professor Raimond Gaita

The 2015 Wednesday Lectures, hosted by Professor Raimond Gaita, will explore whether a morality that is responsive to the deepest part of our history needs a concept of evil that records something different from and more than the judgement that something is morally terrible.

The understanding that "men are not angels" was basic to the founding of the United States. The US Constitution created a ‘government of laws not of men’. If the design of the system meant to control for human nature, why have American politics been so moral in tone and ideological in emphasis? Why, in ‘a nation of lawyers’, are notions of good and evil so basic to political vocabulary? Why is so much public policy conceived of as warfare against malevolent forces? What impact has this had on American political development and American global power? This lecture will address such questions. In doing so, it argues that an enduring political rhetoric of good and evil has more often advanced than retarded US interests.

Timothy Lynch is Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor in American Politics.

Presenters: Dr Gerhard Wiesenfeldt

The principle of libertas philosophandi (or freedom of philosophising) was widely debated in seventeenth century Europe. Should philosophers and other academics be allowed to write and teach without any boundaries given by religion and politics or should only those philosophies be allowed that were deemed acceptable by the ruling authorities? And if philosophical freedom was granted, who should have the right to exercise it, only members of universities or everybody? Many of the answers that were given to these questions led to the modern concepts of academic freedom and freedom of speech.

The philosophies of René Descartes (1596-1650) and Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677) became deeply embroiled in these debates. Not only were many of their respective positions among those that were frequently regarded as transgressing the limits of philosophical freedom, Descartes and Spinoza engaged in the debate themselves and developed their own concepts of libertas philosophandi.

This lecture will discuss the role Descartes and Spinoza played in the debate about academic freedom in the seventeenth century. It will focus on the Dutch Republic, the state in which both philosophers lived and wrote their major works. The Dutch Republic had become known for its religious and intellectual tolerance during the seventeenth century. Yet, even within the young republic toleration had its limits, not the least because of earlier internal conflicts about diverging religious ideas.

Dr Gerhard Wiesenfeldt is a lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science Programme at the University of Melbourne.

The lecture will argue that in the course of the debates the ideas of Descartes and Spinoza on philosophical freedom were regarded as distinct concepts proposing different interpretations of libertas philosophandi.

Presenters: Dr Justin Clemens, Professor Raimond Gaita

The 2015 Wednesday Lectures, hosted by Professor Raimond Gaita, will explore whether a morality that is responsive to the deepest part of our history needs a concept of evil that records something different from and more than the judgement that something is morally terrible.

If morality is in need of such a concept, should it also - does it thereby - have a place in a morally serious conception of law and politics. The lectures will also explore what talk of “our” moral moral/legal/political understanding comes to.

What would we lose if we lost the concept of evil? One thing we would lose would be a certain potential for art. Why? If good and evil are preeminently religious and moral concerns, they also provide the matter of art — and do so in a myriad of ways. If we know that ‘evil don’t look like anything,’ art consistently attempts to present unexpected ways in which evil both obtrudes and withdraws from perception, how it attracts and seduces us. This lecture will try to identify some of the points at which art and morality touch.

Justin Clemens gained his PhD from the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on psychoanalysis, contemporary European philosophy, and contemporary Australian art and literature.

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Presenters: Dr Kirsty Gover, Professor Raimond Gaita

The 2015 Wednesday Lectures, hosted by Professor Raimond Gaita, will explore whether a morality that is responsive to the deepest part of our history needs a concept of evil that records something different from and more than the judgement that something is morally terrible. And, if morality is in need of such a concept, should it also - does it thereby - have a place in a morally serious conception of law and politics. The lectures will also explore what talk of “our” moral moral/legal/political understanding comes to.'

Dr Kirsty Gover was appointed to the faculty in 2009. Her research and publications address the law, policy and political theory of indigenous rights, institutions and jurisdiction.

IMAGE: Photo - Len Matthews, Brunswick Street Art, Fortitude Valley

Presenters: Associate Professor Lisa Ford

The Rum Rebellion was one of many episodes in a neglected saga of British Imperial Governance at the turn of the nineteenth century – the insistent muddying of civil and military order in the colonies after 1783.

Placing the controversy about Governor Bligh in the context of contemporary scandals about Colonel Picton of Trinidad, Joseph Wall of Goree and Commissioner Ball of Malta, controversies about military governance did much more than to threaten Empire with the spectre of revolution. They were used by new, old and tenuous British subjects to expose systemic flaws in colonial constitutions and legal procedures. In the process, they produced a transformative type of constitution talk – a language of privileges that legitimated a peculiar, colonial compromise between civil and military order. This compromise was foundational to the growing constitutional divide between the metropole and the colonies.

Lisa Ford is Associate Professor in History at the University of New South Wales

Presenters: Professor Irad Malkin

In ancient Anatolia, Greeks encountered the figure of a great Goddess whom they identified with Artemis of Ephesos. So unique were her features, and so intimately these were linked with notions of prosperity, safety, and legitimacy, that even the "Oriental" Lydian kings re-adopted her as a Greek Goddess. She was an over-arching deity, common to Ionian (Greek) migrants and colonists, and identified with the very foundation and secure existence of the city. She was the one whom Anatolian colonists (Phocaeans) took with them westwards, together with her priestess, to the modern shores of Spain and France. Her statue and cult (a rare occasion in Greek religion) were intentionally disseminated among Barbarians, such as Iberians and Romans. A goddess of mediation and cultural encounters among settlers, traders, and local populations, she came to express Hellenic identity within wide-reaching Mediterranean horizons.

Irad Malkin is Professor of Greek History at Tel Aviv University. He holds the Cummings Chair for Mediterranean History and Cultures and is co-Founder (1986) and co-Editor of the Mediterranean Historical Review.

Presenters: Laureate Professor Peter Singer, Professor Julian Suvalescu, Dr Neera Bhatia, Mr William Isdale

Join Peter Singer, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and an expert panel including, Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford, Dr Neera Bhatia, Lecturer in Law at Deakin University, Julian Koplin, PhD candidate at Monash University’s Centre for Human Bioethics and William Isdale, Arts/Law Student at the University of Queensland and Academic Excellence Scholar and TJ Ryan Meddalist and Scholar as they discuss Australian organ donation rates and examine the ethics of a broad range of policies that have been proposed to increase these rates.

This public forum will examine the ethics of a broad range of policies that have been proposed to increase organ donation rates. It will bring together bioethicists Peter Singer and Julian Savulescu and others working in this area to discuss a range policies including opt-out systems, prioritising of existing organ donors, reducing the role of family consent, and legalising the sale of organs. In addition to arguments from the panel of speakers, the event will invite audience discussion of the ethics of the various proposals.

Presenters: Professor Frank Brennan, Professor Raimond Gaita

The 2015 Wednesday Lectures, hosted by Professor Raimond Gaita, will explore whether a morality that is responsive to the deepest part of our history needs a concept of evil that records something different from and more than the judgement that something is morally terrible. And, if morality is in need of such a concept, should it also - does it thereby - have a place in a morally serious conception of law and politics. The lectures will also explore what talk of “our” moral moral/legal/political understanding comes to.'

Professor Frank Brennan is a Jesuit priest, Professor of Law at Australian Catholic University and Adjunct Professor at the ANU College of Law and National Centre for Indigenous Studies (NCIS).

Presenters: Anne Manne

The 2015 Wednesday Lectures will explore whether a morality that is responsive to the deepest part of our history needs a concept of evil that records something different from and more than the judgement that something is morally terrible. And, if morality is in need of such a concept, should it also - does it thereby - have a place in a morally serious conception of law and politics. The lectures will also explore what talk of “our” moral moral/legal/political understanding comes to.

Anne Manne is a writer and social commentator who has written widely on feminism, motherhood, childcare, family policy, fertility and related issues.

Presenters: Professor Simon Keller

Patriotism is most fervently displayed in times of war and impending war. Even during times of peace, patriotism is often expressed in commemorations of war and in ceremonies involving the military.

Is patriotism warlike? Does patriotism lust for violence? Or is there an achievable form of patriotism grounded in respect for humanity in general, and aimed at achieving peace?

This talk traces a series of philosophical arguments about the connection between patriotism and war, asking along the way what values and beliefs characterise patriotism, how patriotism is cultivated and used, and how patriotism is manifested in Australia. The great danger of patriotism is not so much its inherent connection with violence as its tendency to suppress reason – and hence its tendency to suppress a crucial form of protection against ill-considered and unjustified war.

Simon Keller is a Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University, Wellington.

Artwork by Kami Lerner, http://www.kamiart.com/

The centennial of the First World War has prompted questions about its impact beyond 1918, one of which was the League of Nations. Formed in 1920 following the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations had an ambitious agenda to check aggression and usher in a new world order following the decimation of war. The League had forty-two founding members, twenty-one other countries joined over the course of the League’s existence from 1920 to 1946. Seven countries left, were expelled or withdrew. The most powerful country in the world, the United States, refused to join having a deep impact on the history of the League.

While the League ultimately failed to prevent another world war its impact on the course of interwar history was varied and complex. It was charged with monitoring militaries and industries adaptable to war-like purposes, it was a place of arbitration for international disputes between member countries providing oversight of international treaties and engagement. It was tasked with promoting fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women and children, with preventing the traffic of women and children and with promoting health and preventing disease. It also housed the Permanent Mandates Commission that bound mandatory countries together - France, Belgium, Japan and the British bloc of Britain, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand - in a new form of colonialism that effected thirteen countries in the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific that were drawn into the mandate system. Despite its failures, the League of Nations did bring countries and people together in new ways from new alignments of nations to new forms of grassroots internationalisms like League of Nations unions.

*'Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.*

Greek painted vases from Athens are our richest and most complex source of images from ancient Greece. Traditionally, they have been grouped together as either scenes of myth or pictures of daily life with most of the scholarly attention being paid to myth.

This lecture will examine not only the different types of subjects connected with daily life that are illustrated on these vases, but will also note subjects not found, such as scenes of cooking or cleaning, activities probably left to slaves.

Scholars are currently divided as to how great the documentary value of vase-paintings is for determining the reality of ancient life in Athens, and the question of whether the vase-paintings are accurate reflections of different aspects of ancient life or pure fantasy has not been answered definitively. Indeed, often multiple interpretations for the same type of scene have been put forth. This lecture will shed light on this question and attempt to solve the quandary.

John Oakley is Chancellor Professor and Forrest D. Murden Jr. Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, USA.

IMAGE: Musical scene with three women. Side A of a red-figure amphora, Walters Art Museum. Niobid Painter, 470-450 BC

Presenters: Professor Andrew May

For the urban historian, writing a new history of Melbourne is rich with possibilities and provocations. In this lecture Professor Andrew May will draw on examples from his current project to discuss the interpretive power of urban history to cast light on the historical relationships between people, places and institutions. He will also reprise two and a half decades of active engagement as a writer, heritage consultant, encyclopedist, exhibition curator, and digital and new media practitioner, to reflect on the role of the historian in the contemporary city.

Presenters: Professor Leon Fink

A now well recognised ‘crisis’ overtook organised labor in the 1970s in Western countries that rippled out, if in delayed form, across the entire ‘developed’ world by the 1990s. The decline of the unions as an organised social bloc and vector of political influence is most commonly associated with ‘de-industrialisation’ and the liberalisation of investment and manufacturing markets. Looking backwards, it seems that, in rather short order, a ‘post-war order’ of extensive labor influence—associated with the heyday of ‘social democracy’ and generous welfare states- was quickly frayed by forces beyond the control of labor. It is now commonplace to speak of a transition in socio-economic policy from Social Democracy to Neo-Liberalism.

Professor Leon Fink offers a re-assessment the idea of opposing post-war eras by emphasizing enduring tensions in ideology and practice already apparent by the end of World War II at the re-creation of the capitalist world economy. Labor movements were slow to address the tensions and contradictions built into the international postwar order in which they occupied a vital place. Correction of the current decline of labor-based social movements should begin with a historically grounded review of the fault lines in our current predicament.

‘Australia in the World’ is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Leon Fink is UIC Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and edits the journal, Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Professor Gil Stein

2015 Marion Adams Memorial Lecture

Honey was used throughout the ancient Near East, and was widely valued as a sweetener, food, medicine, a source for alcoholic beverages (mead), and even for mummification.

Honey also had very deep cultural significance as a metaphor for goodness, abundance, and divine love, and honey bees were treasured symbols of industriousness and an ordered society.

But we know surprisingly little about how bees were first domesticated and the origins of beekeeping. This lecture gives an overview of what we can learn from modern studies, ethnography, archaeology, ancient texts, and art about ancient Near Eastern bees, honey, and beekeeping – in a journey that takes us from ancient Egypt to the realm of King Midas (of the Golden Touch), and ends in “the Land of Milk and Honey” (the land of Canaan).

Gil Stein is Director of the Oriental Institute and Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology at the University of Chicago

IMAGE: Gathering Honey- Rekhmire Tomb 18th Dynasty

Presenters: Ms Suhanya Raffel, Dr Gene Sherman AM

Suhanya Raffel, Deputy Director, Art Gallery of New South Wales and curator of Go East: The Gene & Brian Sherman Contemporary Asian Art Collection and Gene Sherman, Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation - share ideas on their stimulating and fruitful collaboration in realising an exhibition from the Sherman collection.

This conversation will provide a glimpse into the genesis and shaping of the Sherman collection, as well as identifying the curatorial role in framing artworks for national and international audiences.

Suhanya Raffel is Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Previously, she was at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, where she held many senior curatorial positions since 1994, including deputy director of curatorial and collection development from 2010 and acting director during 2012. She was instrumental in building its contemporary Asia Pacific collection and led its Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (since 2002) as well as major curatorial projects such as the Andy Warhol exhibition (2007-08) and The China Project (2009). Ms Raffel was a member of the Asian Art Council at the Guggenheim Museum, New York (2009-14), and serves on the boards of the Australia-China Council, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Canberra and Griffith University Asia Institute, Brisbane.

Dr Gene Sherman AM is Chairman and Executive Director of Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, a philanthropic organisation dedicated to the public exhibition of significant contemporary art from Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East. Dr Sherman is Adjunct Professor, UNSW Art & Design, inaugural patron of the Designers Circle for the MAAS Centre for Fashion; and a board member of The Australian Institute of Art History (2013) and Sydney Contemporary (2014). She is Co-Chair of the Tate Asia-Pacific Acquisitions Committee, a member of the International Association of Art Critics, and an Asialink Asia Literacy Ambassador. She regularly lectures to a wide range of institutions on topics such as gallery management, the art of collecting, philanthropy, private foundations and contemporary Japanese fashion.

Presenters: Professor Ron Adams

The 2015 Greg Dening Memorial Lecture

Greg Dening ends Islands and Beaches with the regret: ‘I do not know the living Men as I know the dead’. He finishes his final sentence with the reflection: ‘I have a half-suspicion that Aoe bring their silence with them.’ He’s writing about the silence he found in Te Henua (The Land, or the Marquesas), and he asks himself where is the silence. It’s not, he tells us, in the sounds of generators, of cocks, of falling coconuts, of rolling pebbles on the beach, of children in the morning, of wind—the everyday sounds that all of us who labour in the Pacific know well. It’s at that deeper, meaning-making, existential level that Te Aoe (Outsiders) largely destroyed and whose muted remnants they cannot plumb.

The southern Vanuatu island of Tanna (which also, like Te Henua, means The Land) is at the other end of the Pacific. It’s also at the other end of the world when it comes to the kind of silence that Dening found in the Marquesas. A century and a half ago, Church and State set about silencing the people of Tanna, but in the end the attempts proved fruitless. Talk may have subsided and from time to time gone underground, but it was never lost.

In Te Henua, Dening lamented that the dead were easier to talk to than the living. In Tanna, to talk to the dead is to talk to the living. As an historian, you can have conversations with the archives—with the literally millions of words that Outsiders have written about the Tannese since 1774. But when you talk to the living—or more precisely when the living talk to you—you discover just how wide of the mark many of those words are.

In this year’s Greg Dening lecture, Associate Professor Ron Adams talks about his forty years of conversations with the archives and with the Tannese—conversations stretching back to the 1970s when he first went to Tanna as one of Dening’s PhD students. He will talk about the challenge of breaking through the kind of silence that confronted Dening in the Marquesas, and the professional and personal joy of reconciling living memory with what the archives hold. And he will reflect on why Tanna continues to exercise such a hold over him—why, four decades on, the island and its people are still under his skin.

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Deanna Petherbridge

This public lecture will compare the rival eighteenth century portraitists Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney, united by their disaffection from portrait painting but revealing contrasting constructions of creativity in their sketches and drawings.

Gainsborough, who was in love with rural life and his invention of British landscape, played with new techniques and combinations of materials with innovative skill and gestural verve. He gave away many of his drawings to friends

Romney, the intense and obsessive melancholic was in search of inspiring historical or social themes and his mercurial sketches in endless private notebooks are attempts to capture inspirational moments at speed in order to serve profound artistic and philosophical ends. His obsessive graphic re-workings of themes are in some respects ‘blind’ drawings propelled towards unachievable goals whereas the pragmatic Gainsborough never ceased to tweak the fresh ‘look’ of his drawings for both his own and others’ pleasure.

This lecture proposes that the hegemonic project of portraiture served to mask the underlying tensions between the neoclassical and the romantic and between grand European narratives and mundane British issues of class, wealth and social mobility that could be addressed more directly in drawing.

Image: Thomas Gainsborough, "Upland Landscape with market cart, cottages and figures", 1778, ink, chalk and gouache, 27 x 34.9 cm, National Gallery of Victoria

Presenters: Sophie Lewincamp

This lecture will present a community-engagement project which was focused on the development of the museological skills of volunteers running the LifeCare retirement village's War Museum. University of Melbourne conservation students have worked with residents and volunteers for the past 5 years to help them establish good museum practices. The students' appreciation of their positive contribution to stakeholder engagement, community museums and commemorative displays deepened as residents demonstrated the links between their wartime experiences and the collection. With increasing professional activity the museum's public profile expanded, inducing more residents to contribute more time, objects and stories to the museum.

The project's beneficial outcomes—educational, personal and community—demonstrate that people learn by solving real problems and can succeed at challenging tasks when the process means something to them, personally.

Sophie Lewincamp has been the project manager for the RSL LifeCare Community Engagement and Conservation Project since 2012 collaborating with CCMC students & alumni, Australian War Memorial staff and RSL LifeCare Veterans. In 2012, the project was awarded The University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor’s Staff Engagement Grant.

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Deanna Petherbridge

This presentation will examine the consummate skill with which Goya represents emotions in his late private albums and some of the print series associated with these drawings. From 1795-6 Goya borrows the figure of the bruja or witch as an historically subversive topos for portraying his disgust with a corrupt clergy, monarchy and cruel social order. As the proportions of his figures change in the album drawings so his ability to suggest subtlety of facial and bodily emotions in his brush and pen work deepens. Language also becomes more intense for Goya, isolated by his total deafness, and the texts appended to drawings and prints are variably metaphoric, playing with language/visual puns or seeming blocks to clarity of meaning. Like his drawings the titles become sparer but more esoteric, especially in his late self- imposed exile to Bordeux. The relationship between ‘speaking’ facial expressions, bodily construction, emotion and textual hints therefore become essential cross referents in approaching the powerful late works.

Deanna Petherbridge is Professor Emeritus at University of the West of England, Bristol.

Presenters: Mr Rodric Braithwaite

The collapse of the Soviet Union was the humiliation of a superpower and its people. The West’s subsequent policy towards Russia was paved with good intentions, but was often arrogant, incompetent and ignorant. Russians were incensed by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) enlargement, and particularly by the offer of NATO membership to Ukraine: most Westerners have never understood the neuralgic relationship between the two countries

This lecture looks at a number of questions: Why has Putin been welcomed by most Russians? What drives his policies in Russia and Ukraine? Western policy over Ukraine may be the best available: are there alternatives to sanctions, strengthening NATO, bolstering Ukraine? Is this a new Cold War? Has the threat Putin poses been exaggerated? What are the chances for his bid to join China in challenging the West? What chances are there for a Western policy which still sees an interest in a stable, prosperous, liberal and cooperative Russia?

Rodric Braithwaite is a British diplomat and author. In 1988-92 he was the British ambassador in Moscow.

Presenters: Dr Rohan Wilson

2015 Manning Clark Lecture

Can we trust fiction writers to tell the truth about the past? Or is fiction simply fabrication?

Australian novelist Rohan Wilson examines these questions through reference to his own writing, in particular taking a look at William Ponsonby, or Black Bill as he was known, and showing how research impacted the novel’s direction and produced certain outcomes in the writing. Thus Wilson aims to illustrate a larger point, which is that history and fiction are not only different ways of looking at the past, but different ways of conceiving of the world. Given this, the author argues it is futile for historians to measure and poke and prod at novels about Australia’s past, looking for errors or flaws. What historians ought to be engaging with, when they criticise fiction, is the myth-making going on. Is the central myth of The Secret River, or The Roving Party, or That Deadman Dance a false one? That basic story of Australian history, which one race forcibly displaced another? If historians want to truly meet fiction on its own terms, in the same way they try to meet the past on its own terms, then they need to do so at the level of mythos, not at the level of the fact.

Dr Rohan Wilson is the winner of the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction for his novel To Name Those Lost.

This lecture is proudly presented in partnership with Manning Clark House. It is co-convened by the Creative Writing program in School of Culture and Communication, and the History program in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

The Manning Clark Centenary Symposium: Writing Past Times will be held on Friday 6 November. For more information click here.

Presenters: Dr Ruth Morgan, Dr Emily O'Gorman, Dr Grace Moore, Professor Libby Robin

Environmental history and the environmental humanities have attracted significant international interest in recent years, with different emphases in different places. Driven by a new sense of urgency created by contemporary environmental crises and greater degrees of interdisciplinary engagement, Australian environmental historians are increasingly crossing established temporal, geographical, cultural and disciplinary boundaries. Australia has been a world leader in the ecological and environmental humanities, and also in teaching Big History, which is strongly environmental in flavour, and inclusive of geological and evolutionary time scales.

In this lecture, we reflect on the state of the fields and explore how Australian environments and their histories challenge global orthodoxies, from wetlands and bushfires to climate change and the Anthropocene.

Presenters: Dr Carolyn Holbrook, Professor Kate Darian-Smith, Dr Maria Tumarkin, Rhys Cooper, Dr A. Frances Johnson, Dr Amy Brown, Dr Rohan Wilson

A symposium to mark the Centenary of the birth of historian Manning Clark (1915-1991)

"The repossession of our past is the repossession of ourselves." – Michael Dodson

"To me, history – the history made, articulated and remembered by human beings – is a subject." – Felix Guattari, Casuality, Subjectivity and History

There are many different ways of writing about our shared past. Novelists may create an illusion of an historical period, writing into a past time as if it is the present. Other writers set out to draw attention to that illusion, and to the writing act as well, exposing visible seams between past and present, between the archive and fiction.

Such a diversity of ways of writing about past time can also be seen among historians. For Manning Clark, the history of Australia was a sweeping narrative of nationhood, and remote historical figures were presented as profoundly human. Other historians take approaches as varied as ethnographic history or biography, or draw upon the emotions and the senses, to interrogate past societies, events and places.

This symposium brings together creative writers and historians to consider recent and new history and fiction dealing with representations of Australia’s past. It considers questions of creativity and imagination, empathy and authenticity.

Chaired by Carolyn Holbrook, creative writers Rohan Wilson, Amy Brown and A. Frances Johnson, join historians Kate Darian-Smith, Maria Tumarkin and Rhys Cooper to discuss their current writing projects, and to debate the ways in which narrative techniques, interrogations of the archive and questions around ethics of representation may forge specific disciplinary outcomes and vital evocations of past into present.

This symposium is proudly presented in partnership with Manning Clark House. It is co-convened by the Creative Writing program in School of Culture and Communication, and the History program in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

The Manning Clark Centenary Lecture: The Lesser Cousin of History? will be held on Thursday 5 November. For more information click here.

Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages was originally produced in 1922 and re-released in 2001. This silent film, written and directed by Benjamin Christensen, explores how superstition and confusion around physical and mental illness was historically associated with witchcraft.

A hybrid of documentary and fiction, this silent film explores the history of witchcraft, demonology and satanism. It shows representations of evil in a variety of ancient and medieval artworks, offers vignettes illustrating a number of superstitious practices and presents a narrative about the persecution of a woman accused of witchcraft. The film ends by suggesting that the modern science of psychology offers important insight into the beliefs and practices of the past.

This screening is part of the Witchcraft and Emotions Symposium - 'Witchcraft and Emotions: Media and Cultural Meanings' hosted at The University of Melbourne.

There will be a panel session and audience Q&A following the screening

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Anthony Long

Much of our information about the Greek philosophers stems from the encyclopaedic work on their lives and doctrines by Diogenes Laertius. This lengthy book is especially important for the information it provides about the founders of the new Hellenistic philosophies—not only what they taught but also how they lived. The most intriguing and puzzling biography is the one Diogenes tells concerning Zeno, the Cypriot merchant who immigrated to Athens and founded the philosophy there that came to be called Stoicism. Diogenes’ elaborate story about Zeno requires us to sift fact from fantasy and construct a plausible persona for this enigmatic and influential thinker.

Anthony Long, a native of Manchester England, is Chancellor’s Professor of Classics Emeritus and Affiliated Professor of Philosophy at the University of California Berkeley. Between 1961 and 2013 Long taught at universities in New Zealand, England and the USA, where he served as Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1982 until his retirement in 2013.

This public lecture is part of an international colloquium convened at Queens College, called “The Placita of Aëtius: Foundations for the study of ancient philosophy”. The Master of Queens College, David Runia, is a Professorial Fellow of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Ms Zhang Yongjian, Associate Professor Yuan Hong

Associate Professor Yuan Hong will present on Mural conservation and scientific methods used in extraction of cultural information.

Murals contained within tombs pose a diverse range of site specific issues in their investigation and conservation. Using microscopic techniques, spectrographic imaging and elemental analysis, information embedded in the murals can be used to inform conservators about the original materials as well as the condition and treatment requirements of these forms of cultural heritage.

Ms Zhang Yongjian explores Laboratory-based micro-scale excavation and its application Current methods used in the lab-based, micro-scale excavation of cultural relics are capable of having the combined merits of excavation, archaeometry and conservation. These methods have proven to be especially effective in the excavation and treatment of cultural relics that consist of numerous small, individual parts and with a complex spatial distribution. The excavation from a plaster block of jewellery from North-Zhou dynasty provides an example of the conservation application of these methods.

IMAGE: Murals: Museum of Prince Jieman, Tang Dynasty

Presenters: Dr Andrew Jamieson

Object-based learning is an integral part of Dr Andrew Jamieson’s approach to teaching, forming a central educational element in course design and delivery. Andrew’s use of objects resonates with students, contributes significantly to learning, and is now becoming a major focus within the Faculty of Arts. In this presentation Andrew will discuss object-based learning and the Classics and Archaeology Collection. It will include reference to Mummymania exhibition currently on display at the Ian Potter Museum of Art.

With over 20 years of tertiary education experience Dr Andrew Jamieson, senior lecturer in Classics and Archaeology in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and curator of the antiquities collection at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, has inspired thousands of students, and successfully engaged audiences in the wider community with his passionate lectures and enthusiastic public speaking style. Andrew’s approach to teaching and engagement is based on extensive fieldwork and excavation experience.

Presenters: Associate Professor Emily Baragwanath

This lecture examines the theory behind the ancient Greek historian Xenophon’s use of speeches across the several genres of his literary oeuvre. The lecture also reviews the speeches' functions, before taking a closer look at four case studies: in the "Hellenica", the speeches of Euryptolemus to the Athenians, of Pharnabazus and Agesilaus, and of the Athenians to the Spartans; and in the "Anabasis," the speech of Xenophon to the Greek mercenaries. The lecture argues that Xenophon proves remarkably creative in his employment of speeches, even as he finds inspiration both poetic and historiographical. Rather than simply recounting particulars, the speeches promote narrative intelligibility and assist readers to engage with the account of events, in various ways, including by revealing the abilities (or lack thereof) of those responsible for shaping policy or strategy; or by setting out higher truths, especially relating to character and relationships. This public lecture doubles as the keynote address for the ASCS (Australasian Society for Classical Studies) 37th Annual Conference and is sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria.

Emily Baragwanath's main area of scholarly interest is the literary techniques employed by Greek historians in their construction of historical narratives.

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Edwin Judge, Associate Professor Emily Baragwanath

The Australasian Society for Classical Studies 37th Annual Conference and General Meeting is a 4-day conference featuring over 120 papers on the literature, history, philosophy, art and archaeology of the Greek and Roman worlds, from the Bronze Age through Classical and Hellenistic Greece, Republican and Imperial Rome, and into Late Antiquity.

There are also papers on the art and archaeology of Egypt, early Christian and Byzantine studies, and reception studies.

This is the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Annual Conference.

Presenters: Dr Kirk Essary, Dr Brandon Chua, Dr Diana Barnes, Associate Professor Cora Fox, Dr Katherine Heavey, Dr Gordon Raeburn

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Greek and Roman classics became increasingly central to the European literary imagination, being referenced, translated, adopted and reshaped by a huge range of authors. In turn, current criticism of early modern literature is ever more concerned with the period’s reception and appropriation of the classical past. Greek and Roman myths held a two­fold appeal for authors: they were 'known' stories, culturally iconic and comfortingly familiar to the educated reader, but readerly knowledge could also be manipulated, and the myths reshaped in emotionally provocative and iconoclastic ways.

This one day symposium at The University of Melbourne will be an investigation into early modern use of classical myths, asking how myth was used both 'privately', to excite emotional effect, and 'publicly', to respond to political, religious, or social events. This symposium will focus on how and why myth was used specifically to excite and manipulate emotional responses in early modern readers and audiences: responses that might run counter to the original, classical focus of such stories.

Presenters: Professor Benjamin Schmidt, Professor Paul Yachnin

Linked presentations by Benjamin Schmidt and Paul Yachnin

The World of Conversion: Shakespeare

Paul Yachnin is Tomlinson Professor of Shakespeare Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

For more than a century up to and including Shakespeare’s time, conversion was the centerpiece of religious, social, and political life. It was also a site of crisis. How could Spanish Christian authorities be sure that the conversions they had compelled their Jewish subjects to undergo would stick? The same kinds of challenges dogged the conversional programs in the Americas and also through the sixteenth century in Britain as the population, including Shakespeare’s family, was harried back and forth by wholesale shifts in the confessional identity of the Church.

Shakespeare mined the resources of problematized conversion from The Taming of the Shrew to The Tempest, where characters such as Katherine and Caliban grow deeper on account of the undecidability of their conversions. Shakespeare did not un-tether conversion from religion, but he let out so much line that conversion came to live and signify primarily in particular characters and in their particular stories. By relocating conversion to plays that were almost emptied of religious doctrine but were nevertheless filled with religious language, thought, and emotion, Shakespeare created a world in which playgoers found themselves free to think feelingly about the individual and collective crisis of conversion through which they were living.

The Conversion of the World: China/china

Benjamin Schmidt is the Giovanni & Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington in Seattle (USA).

In January 1708, Europe triumphantly discovered China/china. That is, nearly half a millennium after the departure of the Polo brothers for the East and the ensuing, energetic, enterprising pursuit by Europeans of China, an alchemist sequestered in a dungeon in Dresden managed to produce hard-paste porcelain, thus solving the ancient arcanum of Asian ceramics. This discovery marked a critical change in material arts and the production of china, of course; yet it also sparked a fundamental shift in Europe's conception of China—and, ultimately, of the world. This talk looks at the alchemical moment of Meissen (as the new porcelain would be called) in the context of evolving European conceptions of its place in the world—as a form of geo-conversion of broad-reaching repercussions. It draws connections between material arts and geography, and it argues that an essential shift in global imagination took place in sync with the technological innovations, material productions, and decorative strategies developed in Meissen. It narrates, in short, an alchemical drama—a veritable conversion—that changed the world.

Presenters: Professor Benjamin Schmidt, Professor Paul Yachnin

In this cross-disciplinary workshop, Benjamin Schmidt and Paul Yachnin lead a hands-on examination of the emotional and conversional power of material objects. They will speak to particular objects of their research, and they will also interrogate the object-subject relationship: how things are affective, and the effort early moderns made to affect things.

Participants are invited to bring moving objects of their own, objects that might be resonant with early modern lives or with our present lives in a postmodern world. Together the members of the workshop will consider how seventeenth-century and later objects, such as china, skulls, and many other things—mundane and sacred—shaped, moved, and even converted their bearers and users.

In ways that are like ours and in ways that are strange to us, the lives of our early modern forebears were bound up with matter: with material, tangible, resonant things. Utensils made of wood and pewter, clothing designed from wool and silk, books formed of parchment and ultimately paper. Likewise, the materiality of human bodies, even in death, preoccupied the early modern psyche, as the ubiquity of the memento mori in Renaissance art and theatre attests and as church reliquaries, to this day, still demonstrate.

Also, with consent, participants will have the opportunity to have their object photographed and take part in a brief audio interview sharing its history, symbolism and importance after the workshop. Your moving work will become part of a digital archive that will be freely available to you following the event on the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions website (www.historyofemotions.org.au).

If you are interested in participating in this activity, please note at the time of registration and email: penelope.lee@unimelb.edu.au to arrange scheduling.

Presenters: Professor Paul Zimansky, Professor Elizabeth Stone

The World’s earliest cities are to be found in southern Mesopotamia, initiating an urban tradition that was to last for some four thousand years. The remains of these cities have been the focus of archaeological excavations for more than a century, providing details of their institutional structures and the residences of the broader population, both supplemented by documents written on clay.

Professor Elizabeth Stone and Professor Paul Zimansky have initiated new archaeological excavations at the celebrated southern Mesopotamian city of Ur, where they are employing modern technologies to expand the exploration of a neighborhood of private houses uncovered by Sir Leonard Woolley in the early twentieth century CE.

This lecture will use the data that has resulted from these projects, including Stone and Zimansky's own fieldwork at the cities of Ur and Mashkan-shapir, to describe how people lived some four thousand years ago in what is now modern Iraq.

Elizabeth Stone is a Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University, New York. Her research has been directed towards the ways in which urban structures reflect the underlying social, political and economic organization of their civilizations.

Paul Zimansky is a Professor of Ancient History at Stony Brook University, New York. His research concerns are early empires and states of the ancient Near East, particularly how governing institutions influenced the social and economic behaviour of their inhabitants.

IMAGE: Standard of Ur, British Museum

Presenters: Professor Ian Hodder

This talk will summarise 22 years of archaeological excavation at the 9000 year-old Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in central Turkey. The site was first excavated by James Mellaart in the 1960s and recent research has led to many changes in the way the site is understood. The talk will focus on some aspects of this new understanding, particularly with regard to social and political identity, burial practices and history making. An additional focus will be on how inter-personal violence was managed in a town that contained up to 8000 people. The new understanding of Çatalhöyük is also shown to be relevant for other sites in the Middle East and for the adoption of agriculture and settled life, practises that formed the foundations of contemporary civilisation and identity.

This talk is funded by the Anthony McNicoll Fellowship, hosted by the University of Sydney.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria.

Presenters: Professor Gillian Russell

presented by Professor Gillian Russell.

The commemoration of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising has been an event of major significance for Ireland that has been marked globally, including here in Australia.

This lecture will examine the Rising from two perspectives: as a ‘theatre of war’ and as re-enactment. From the precise moment that Padraig Pearse proclaimed the Irish Republic, at 12 noon on Monday 24 April, 1916 to Captain Peter Kelleher’s ceremonial re-reading of the Proclamation on Easter Sunday 2016, theatricality has been crucial to the articulation of the meaning of the Rising in ways that, though widely acknowledged, still warrant analysis. Following David Fitzpatrick, Russell asks: is Ireland’s investment in historical re-enactment exceptional and will a final curtain ever come down on this particular show?

The 2016 Ernest Scott Prize This lecture will be followed by the announcement of the winner of the prestigious 2016 Ernest Scott Prize. The shortlist can be viewed at https://articulation.arts.unimelb.edu.au/?p=5399. The Ernest Scott Prize is awarded annually for the most distinguished contribution to the history of Australia or New Zealand, and is supported by the History Program in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. A reception will follow.

Objects are to ideas, as constellations are to stars -Walter Benjamin

Objects have lives, and people have relationships with objects. Our possessions are static witnesses to the trajectory of time, and hold traces of distant places and people, conduits to our remembering. These forms contain the fragments of histories, concrete memories of distilled life that trace the narrative of self. Through the course of our lives we come to surround and adorn ourselves with meaningful objects. In the end, our possessions outlive us. In this way, our most intimate objects are an extension of us. Our things are a self-portrait and material for contemplation, revelation and comfort.

This workshop combines facilitated discussion and simple art making process to examine the emotional relationship of people to the material world, in relation to personal lived experience and deeper self-understanding. How do the objects around us make us feel? Why do some possessions feel special? What stories do our possessions hold? What drives us to collect and how might keepsakes be supportive to our sense of self and wellbeing?

Participants are invited to bring with them a personal meaningful object, measuring no more than 20cm squared. The stories of these objects will be shared and the object documented through a simple casting process. Participants and objects will be treated with respect and every effort made to cause no damage to the object through the casting process. With permission, the cast created within the workshop will become part of the exhibition The emotional life of objects, to be convened at the George Paton Gallery, The University of Melbourne, Wednesday 3 - Friday 14 May; Closing Event, Wednesday 11th May, 5 -7pm.

Following the exhibition, cast objects will be made available for makers to collect.

The emotional life of objects is a collaborative project between the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions and Master of Curatorship student Kate Richards, The University of Melbourne. This exhibition extends the Centre’s investigation of personal and communal experience of emotions across time.

To book: https://secure.alumni.unimelb.edu.au/s/1182/match/wide.aspx?sid=1182&gid=1&pgid=8548&cid=12416 RSVP by 2 May 2016

For more information on this workshop, or the exhibition, please contact: Penelope Lee: penelope.lee@unimelb.edu.au or Kate Richards: richardsk1@student.unimelb.edu.au

Workshop Schedule:

5:30 Registration George Paton Gallery

6:00 Introduction and exhibition talk

6:30 Sharing of objects

7:00 Casting of objects

7:30 Closing comments

Presenters: Professor Yasmin Saikia

How does love for home/nation become the site for intolerance and provoke violence against neighbours deemed 'betrayers' and Other? What precipitates the expression of this hate? Is shared humanity possible among erstwhile perpetrators and victims? What do we have to gain by engaging a different grammar of humanity in South Asia? Through the method of oral history, Professor Saikia probes the memories of violence of soldiers and civilians, men and women, perpetrators and victims of the 1971 war. A common and shared memory of this variety was the humbling experience of participating in a destructive war for nation-building/breaking. Particularly, perpetrators’ private memories open the space for situating the divergent desires that clashed with one another for and against the national imagination. Today, the nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh refuse to acknowledge the 'disastrous' memories of 1971 because it unsettles state histories. For perpetrators, however, the memories of violence are critical for understanding the meaning of sacrifice for nation, as well raising for some the question of ethical responsibility to victims.

In this talk, Professor Yasmin Saikia explores the possibilities for remembering the traumatic events of 1971 war differently, and the ways in which such remembering might signal the way forward to new ways of imagining the subcontinental human condition

Professor Yasmin Saikia is Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict and a Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University.

Presenters: Professor Robyn Sloggett AM

The material world surrounds us: feeding our senses, our imagination and our curiosity. We inherit and we create cultural and scientific records that help us make sense of this world. Cultural materials conservation employs materiality to understand and protect these records, integrating knowledge acquired in the sciences and the humanities with that developed by cultural knowledge holders and practitioners. Conservation studies provide unique understandings of how cultural knowledge, disciplinary knowledge and the materiality that surrounds us, can come together to shed light on significant questions of knowledge and identity.

In this lecture Professor Robyn Sloggett explores the valuable contribution that cultural materials conservation makes to the continual quest to understand our place in the world. She examines how conservation studies expand our understanding of Australia's diverse epistemological traditions and their significance in contemporary Australian life and expand opportunities for economic innovation, referencing Australia's rich, ancient and continuous Indigenous knowledge, the disciplinary genealogy of the Western history of ideas, and our place in the Asia-Pacific region.

Her lecture concludes by addressing the question: Without a national strategy for the preservation of its cultural and scientific record is Australia risking identity amnesia?

Professor Robyn Sloggett AM is Director of the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation at the University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Dr Catherine Kevin, Jacinthe Flore, Kat Ellinghaus, Dr Mary Tomsic

In this roundtable conversation, featuring Mary Tomsic, Kat Ellinghaus, Catherine Kevin and Jacinthe Flore, the panel will discuss the ways in which gender histories have been, and can be, written. Each speaker will reflect on their own practices of writing histories of gender in local, transnational, and global contexts, exploring the key ideas, texts, and archives that they have engaged with. Bringing in examples from their research, these four speakers will together converse about sexuality, racialisation, feminism, science, representation, and writing in Australia and across the world.

Australia in the World is a lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the interconnectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe. Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

Kat Ellinghaus is a Monash Fellow in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies at Monash University.

Jacinthe Flore teaches in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne and is currently completing her PhD.

Catherine Kevin is a Senior Lecturer in Australian History at Flinders University.

Mary Tomsic is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in History at The University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Professor Mark Edele

The question of Red Army soldiers crossing the line to the Germans during the German-Soviet war of 1941-45 has long obsessed historians. Some have treated all Soviet prisoners of war as deserters to the enemy, while others have tried to minimize the phenomenon. This lecture explores newly available evidence from German and Soviet sources in an empirical exploration of the reasons, the extent, and the problems of the process of switching allegiance at the frontline. In a second step, the lecture will explore how this phenomenon adjusts our perception about the Soviet war effort and the political loyalties of ordinary Soviet citizens.

Mark Edele is Professor of History at the University of Western Australia, where he has been teaching history and historiography since 2004.

Presenters: Professor Elizabeth Anderson

The 2016 Barry Taylor and David Lewis Philosophy Lecture is presented by Professor Elizabeth Anderson.

Pragmatism is often loosely characterized as the view that people should adopt "whatever works." This seems like empty and useless advice, since it omits any substantive criterion of what works. This lecture will explain what this advice really means, why we ought to follow it, and how we can follow it. The key to pragmatism lies in its method, which deeply integrates moral with empirical inquiry. Pragmatism offers two ways to intelligently update our moral beliefs: bias correction, and experiments in living. In this presentation, Professor Anderson will illustrate how these methods work and why they make sense.

Professor Elizabeth Anderson is the author of Value in Ethics and Economics (Harvard UP, 1993), The Imperative of Integration (Princeton UP, 2010), and numerous, widely reprinted articles in journals of philosophy, law, and economics.

Presenters: Professor Sally Haslanger

Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice also involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby argues that racism is an ideology that consists in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this lecture Haslanger agrees that racism is an ideology, but in her view, ideology is deeply rooted in social practices. Social practices are patterns of interaction that distribute things of value, guided by cultural meanings. In the case of subordinated social groups, these habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about those groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? Haslanger argues that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means.

Professor Sally Haslanger presents the 2016 Miegunyah Philosophy Lecture. Sally Haslanger is the Ford Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

Presenters: Associate Professor Lisa Ford

This lecture begins with the execution of a “very fine pig” in Sydney in 1795. Pigs made notoriously disorderly colonists – procreating, trespassing and damaging public property at will. But this particular pig caused an unusual amount of trouble. Her death escalated into a brawl when her master – an “avowed” republican called John Boston – ran into the street to demand which “damned Villain of a Rascal” had shot his sow. The villainous rascals, it transpired, were members of the New South Wales Corps. They responded by giving Boston a “damned good threshing”. It would not do, they argued later, to let such a man insult the King’s soldiers in a colony of thieves. This fracas is more than an amusing anecdote. The legal controversy that followed showed that the brawlers, the governor and the court held quite different ideas about how to keep order in the colony of New South Wales. The Corps argued that the threat of revolution and the convict majority meant that soldiers needed special power and status to keep the colonial peace. John Boston argued that the colony needed to support peculiar liberties – his liberty to talk politics, but, more importantly, his liberty to trade and contract with convicts who would have no legal standing at home. The governor and the court defended civil law against military violence, but they too imagined a compromised legal order – one where both convicts could testify against free men and the governor wielded extraordinary power. New South Wales was a strange place indeed in 1795. But, this lecture will argue that the controversy tells us a great deal about how the British imperial constitution was imagined in the age of revolutions. In the upheavals of colonial Boston and Montreal, in the fractious military autocracies of Trinidad and Malta, and in the street-side brawls of Sydney, colonists, governors, judges and soldiers argued endlessly about how to order colonies full of unruly subjects. Disputes like these mattered – at stake were the rights of British subjects scattered around the globe.

Presenters: Professor Ghassan Hage

The Wednesday Lectures 2016 Hosted by Raimond Gaita

It is striking how often people now speak of 'a common humanity' in an ethically inflected register, one that expresses a fellowship of all the peoples of the earth. More often than not, however, we refer to the idea of a common humanity when we lament the failure of its acknowledgment. The forms of that failure are depressingly many: racism, sexism, homophobia, the dehumanization of our enemies, of unrepentant criminals and those who suffer severe and degrading affliction. As often as someone reminds us that 'we are all human beings', someone will reply that to be treated like a human being you must behave like one.

Many people appear now to fear that within twenty years or less national and international politics will be dominated by crises that caused and inflamed by the shameful gap between the rich and the poor nations, aggravated by the effects of climate change. They fear their children and grandchildren will not be protected as they have been from the terrors suffered by most of the peoples of the earth because of impoverishment, natural disasters and the evils inflicted upon them by other human beings. In such circumstances the ideal and even the very idea of a common humanity is likely to seem to have been a foolish illusion.

The Wednesday Lectures 2016 hosted by Raimond Gaita will explore what sustains and what erodes the idea of a common humanity and, more radically, whether it is a useful idea with which to think about the moral, legal and political relations between people and peoples.

Wednesday, 3 August: White Concepts

White Concepts are concepts that claim universality but that are blind to the colonial conditions of production of their universality. The lecture will explore these questions: is 'a common humanity' a white concept and is it useful to even ask this question today?

Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory at The University of Melbourne. He has held a number of visiting professorships including at Pierre Bordieus Research Centre and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, American University of Beirut, University of Nanterre - Paris X, University of Copenhagen and Harvard University. His books include: White Nations: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society; Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society; Alter-Politics Critical Anthropology, Political Passion and Radical Imagination and, as editor, Responsibility; Force Movement, Intensity: The Newtonian Imagination in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Waiting.

Presenters: Dr Jan Rüger

Presented by Dr Jan Rüger:

‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice’, Francis Bacon wrote four centuries ago. It was a form of retribution, he thought, ‘which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out’. Blood feuds and revenge killings were still a common feature in Europe when Bacon penned his critique in 1625. In the centuries that followed revenge became a taboo within European societies, but it continued to play an important role in the justification of war and violence against others. It still does. Since the attacks of 11 September 2001 there has been an appalling resurgence of vengeance as a rhetorical tool and military practice: terrorism has come to be seen as a form of revenge which in turn justifies violent retribution.

If we want to make sense of the role revenge plays in our own times, we need to know under what circumstances past societies promoted or prohibited the desire for ‘wild justice’. The lecture focuses on the long nineteenth century in which a series of ‘small wars’ and punitive campaigns were fought by which the imperial powers avenged the deaths of Europeans overseas. Most of these campaigns followed a similar structure and were accompanied by similar rhetoric, with ‘punishment’ and ‘revenge’ being the most widely used concepts employed to give meaning to them. Using British, French and German examples, the lecture explores the thinking and acting that was at the heart of this culture of revenge, a culture in which civilization and violence were intrinsically bound up with one another.

Presenters: Dr Jennifer Whiting, Professor Udo Thiel

This conference aims to bring together scholars who work on theories of personal identity in the history of philosophy or on the development of historical theories in contemporary philosophy.

The conference focuses on debates about the self or personal identity which have not received perennial attention and contributions that approach the debates from innovative questions, including, but not restricted to the following:

Why did some thinkers approach personal identity purely as a topic in metaphysics, while others acknowledged a moral dimension?

What, if any reasons are there for distinguishing moral selves from human beings?

What role do friends, family and society play in theories of personal identity?

Registration is free and early registration is recommended. Lunch registration is separate and closes 25 July 2016.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Dr Jonathan Delafield-Butt

This symposium will explore the status of children’s voices and their ability to tell their own stories in contemporary Australia. A blend of keynote, researcher and practitioner paper and poster presentations, youth panel, art, film and performance will tackle socio-cultural, institutional, developmental and legal models and concepts surrounding the voice of the child.

All participants will be given the opportunity to contribute to a collective response that addresses the following questions and concerns:

• The concept of “voice” as an instrument of personal and political empowerment
  
• What is involved and at stake in the ability to narrate one’s own experience?
  
• Do children in contemporary Australia have a capacity to tell their own stories?
  
• How does neuroscience provide insight into storytelling, especially from the perspective of child development?
  
• How do we ensure that unconventional, unexpected, or disturbing forms of narration from children are met with flexible, robust and supportive responses in contemporary Australia?
  

This interdisciplinary symposium will bring together researchers, practitioners and professionals who work with and support children, families and carers, as well as children and young people with lived experience. It will provide an opportunity for pooling knowledge, insights and experiences to strengthen our overall understanding of the significance and value of children’s voice, as well as when, and how, children can make themselves heard.

Keynote The Emotional Embodied Nature of Human Understanding: Making Meaning in Shared Projects of Discovery
This talk examines the emotional, embodied nature of human understanding before it achieves linguistic expression, as a route to understanding basic principles of social awareness, affective contact, and learning, and how to work with them.

Dr Jonathan Delafield-Butt, Senior Lecturer in Child Development, University of Strathclyde, UK. His work examines the origins of human experience and the embodied and emotional foundations of development.

This event is presented by The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotion in collaboration with The Dax Centre.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (www.historyofemotions.org.au) uses historical knowledge from Europe, 1100-1800, to understand the long history of emotional behaviours.

The Dax Centre is a learning organisation committed to increasing community awareness and understanding of mental illness and psychological trauma through art. Using selections of artworks from the Cunningham Dax Collection, which consists of artworks and poetry created by people with a lived experience of mental illness or psychological trauma, as the centrepiece of its learning programs and exhibitions. The Dax Centre generates meaningful ways to share knowledge, ideas and research about the mind, mental health and wellbeing.

Image: Brock Brown, Feelings of Black Saturday, 2009, acrylic on paper, 29.6 x 41.8 cm, The Cunningham Dax Collection, 2015.0091

Presenters: Associate Professor Richard Pennell

Islamic State and its predecessors in Iraq have become famous for their violence, even more than their jihadist rival, al-Qaeda. IS is personally brutal while al-Qaeda has typically engaged in mass-atrocities in the past and, more recently has become much less active. There is a deep antipathy between the two, even though they at one time claimed to have merged into a single movement. This lecture is about how the two organisations differ in their attitudes to religion, authority and the purposes of armed revolution and how this is put into effect by violence.

Associate Professor Richard Pennell is al-Tajir Lecturer in the History of the Middle East and Islam in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

The plight of refugees has become the global issue of our times. The United Nations has estimated that over 65 million people worldwide are displaced as a result of conflict and persecution, the highest number since the 1990s. In most recent events, an estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes since the outbreak of civil war in 2011.

Throughout the twentieth century and now into the early decades of the twenty-first century, involuntary displacement of peoples has become a defining feature of the modern era. This 3-day international conference seeks to explore all aspects of the history of the past and present plight of refugees.

It aims to address a broad range of questions relating to this history, such as:
- What has defined different refugee crises at different times in history?
- What has been the magnitude of the refugee crisis and how can we explain its scale?
- How have governments, humanitarian aid agencies, philanthropic and other organizations responded to refugee crises in modern times?
- What have they learnt from past campaigns?
- How have refugees experienced displacement?
- How has the refugee experience changed time?

Conference papers will explore themes such as:
- The place of personal testimony in understanding the histories of displaced people
- How the category of refugee has been defined in different times and places
- The changing process of regulation and administration of displaced people
- The role of place and space in understanding histories of displacement
- The relationships between historical and contemporary debates about refugees
- The place of gender, families and nations in understanding refugee histories
- The place of sound, speech, music and visual representations in refugee histories
- How displacement and migration has been remembered, and narratives used to understand these histories
- The historical and political work of humanitarian endevours with displaced people

Ticket prices: $55-$110

Presenters: Professor Melvyn P. Leffler

The war in Iraq launched in 2003 was a decisive moment in post-Cold War international history. This lecture will challenge and interrogate prevailing interpretations of why the United States went to war in March 2003. Critics argue that hubris, power, and greed (oil) inspired the neoconservatives in the Bush administration to push for war. These critics are not wrong, but their explanation is incomplete. A more textured account of the decision to go to war is essential to illuminate the complexities of decision-making and to understand why policy turned out so tragically.

Based on interviews with leading members of the Bush administration, captured Iraqi records, documents and records from the Chilcot parliamentary inquiry in the United Kingdom, declassified U.S. documents, and memoirs and public interviews, this lecture offers a new synthesis, arguing that in addition to hubris and power, fear, threat perception, guilt over 9/11, a sense of responsibility, and worries about domestic political recriminations exerted decisive influence on policymakers.

Melvyn P. Leffler is the Edward Stettinius Chair of American History at the University of Virginia and Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow 2016 at the University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Professor Peter Pormann

The medical tradition, which developed in the lands of Islam from the seventh century AD onwards, is rich and variegated. Its history stretches over more than a millennium, and involves people of many languages (Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Syriac, Hebrew) and faiths (Muslims, Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and pagans). Given the breadth of this field, this lecture will focus on several key themes expressed through individual examples, and illustrated by miniatures, diagrams, and artefacts. These themes include:

The Emergence of Islamic Medicine: During the classical age of Islam and under the aegis of the ‘Abbasids' (ca. 750–950), an extremely sophisticated medical tradition emerged. Based mainly on Greek medical theory and practice, it blended its own heritage with the legacy of the other cultures with which it was in contact including the Byzantines, Alexandrians, Sasanians, and Syriac-speaking Christians.

Medical Theory: The system adopted in the learned medical tradition is generally Galenic, and its main features will be explored briefly. We will notably look at Ibn al-Nafis’ ‘discovery’ of the pulmonary transit (and dispel some myths surrounding this topic). In addition we will examine how medical knowledge was organised in some of the most famous medical encyclopaedias of the time, including Avicenna’s Canon.

Medical Practice: In recent times, scholars have raised the question as to what extent the theory described in the medical manuals corresponded to actual practice. Here again, some myths (such as Caesarean sections) will be dispelled, whilst interesting cases of clinical innovation will be presented.

Physicians and Society: Who were the doctors of Damascus and Toledo, and of Cairo and Baghdad? How did they function within the larger society? What public health initiatives were deployed to provide the poor as well as the powerful with access to medical care? These questions will be discussed, with special reference to the hospital and other institutions of Islamic charity, for which the Muslim Middle Ages are deservedly famous.

Popular Medicine: Magic and divination, pious ritual and prophetic medicine formed as much a part of the therapeutic arsenal as more ‘learned’ practices. We will briefly look at some texts and artefacts in order to augment our understanding of medieval responses to disease.

Continuous tradition: To conclude, this lecture will explore the impact of the Islamic medical tradition on both Western and Eastern medicine. European university medicine emerged on the basis of this tradition (in Latin translation), and still continues to be practised today, not only in the Muslim world, but also in the West. It is this examination of these continuities that will round out this thematic historical overview.

Presenter Peter E. Pormann, D.Litt., M.A., D.Phil., M.Phil. (Oxon); M.A. (Leiden); FRAS, is Professor of Classics and Graeco-Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester.

Presenters: Dr Mirjam Brusius

The history of museums has mostly centred around questions of exhibiting, display and spectatorship. But museums do not just consist of exhibition halls. They are composed of vast hidden spaces, where the majority of museum objects are kept.

In this talk Dr Mirjam Brusius will address the binary between ‘display’ and ‘backstage’ of museums from a historical angle. Backstage areas were never simply areas where potential display objects are kept. They performed functions that, when studied, reveal deep purposes of the museum that go well beyond a mere history of display. They often included archives, study centres and libraries, which were places of scholarly encounter. The talk will also raise some fundamental questions about the nature of museums today. Why do museums store objects they might never display, and which intentions might those objects fulfill?

Mirjam Brusius is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford.

Presenters: Professor Catherine Steel

The Roman Republic was a political system which combined direct participatory democracy with a restricted and wealthy political class who monopolised public office and sought to direct policy through the Roman Senate. Political life was marked by deep divisions in policy and method, between those who worked through the elite and those who appealed directly to the people. The resulting clashes became increasingly violent until the Republic ended in the first century BC to be replaced, after prolonged civil war, with a monarchy. In this lecture, Professor Steel analyses the political and constitutional factors which underpinned this complex and frequently unstable system and explores the range of solutions which the Romans sought to adopt to protect and sustain their fragile Republican system.

Presenters: Ms Geraldine Robertson, Mr Jack Roberts, Dr Tom Denison, Dr Graham Willett, Dr Tony Birch

This event will bring together a variety of people working with social movement archives in Melbourne. Each will give a short presentation about their work followed by a panel discussion. Topics to be discussed include the roles archives play within and in relation to social movements and research, issues and options concerning funding, maintenance, and long term sustainability, and opportunities for activists, researchers and others to make donations, work with existing archives or start their own.

Presenters: Professor James Grantham Turner

Art & Love explores the "erotic revolution" that swept through aesthetic theory and artistic practice in the sixteenth century. Early modern "sex-positive" polemic denounced the false shame that devalues physical, sexual love, and targeted neo-Platonism, with its fierce rejection of corporeal sexuality and bodily sensation.

Professor James Grantham Turner traces the evolution of interpretations of Platonic Eros, expressed through important semantic changes in words like "lascivious" and "libido", suddenly used in a positive sense during this period. Platonic anticorporeality was absolutely rejected; but elements of the Platonic image of a graduated ascent, rising up on a ladder by a series of "steps" to attain the highest form of Love, were retained, and even amplified.

Professor James Grantham Turner holds the James D. Hart Chair in English at the University of California, Berkeley

Image Credit - 'Turner on ladder in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, Florence", Martha Pollack

Presenters: Professor Woodrow Hertzog

The concept of obscurity plays a profound and under-appreciated role in shaping our identities.

First, obscurity gives us the breathing room to fully develop who we are as human beings. Even when we interact with others in public, we are typically shrouded in obscurity, which gives us a degree of freedom of interaction to experiment and make mistakes without severe penalties. This freedom is being threatened by modern technologies like facial recognition apps and other modes of contemporary surveillance, and it is troubling that the tech industry tries to sidestep the issue of our right to obscurity.

Second, obscurity is a completely necessary precondition for the performative aspect of identity. Drawing upon the work of Erving Goffman and Irwin Altman, Professor Woodrow Hartzog argues that obscurity is the key boundary management technique by which we reveal certain shades of our identity to others. Recognizing what makes up this obscurity, such as semantic vagueness, information search costs, and architectural constraints, is thus much more central to identity than most consider.

Professor Hartzog is the Starnes Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law and an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

Presenters: Professor Philipp W. Stockhammer

This talk will demonstrate how a transcultural and entangled approach to Mycenaean pottery and social drinking in ancient Greece and the Levant can show the potential for better understanding the social meaning of pottery.

This event is co-sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria.

Presenters: Dr Gijs Tol, Associate Professor Frederik Vervaet, Dr Hyun Jin Kim, Dr Lewis Mayo, Dr Brent Davis, Dr Andrew Jamieson, John Whitehouse

This professional development course for ancient history teachers closely relates to VCE Units 1 to 4 of the Ancient History Study Design. In the first session John Whitehouse from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education will give a pedagogical overview of teaching ancient history. Each week eminent scholars from the Faculty of Arts will present key areas of study including Ancient Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, exploring and developing historical skills, historical thinking and highlight a selection of appropriate primary source materials and historical interpretations.

Professional Certificates of participation will be offered upon completion of the course and VIT applicable.

Love in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe was a complex emotion, a constellation of feelings shaped and reflected by artists, writers and thinkers that sought to give expression to human experience and also provide models for individual and group behavior. Notions of love took different forms and involved a range of emotions across time and space, under the influence of changing community norms, cultural practices, political institutions and social media.

This symposium coincides with the exhibition Love: Art of Emotion 1400–1800 at the National Gallery of Victoria, 31 March–18 June, 2017, which draws on the NGV’s permanent collection of European art. The accompanying symposium will engage with and extend the themes presented in the exhibition primarily through visual art, but also through literature and music. It will explore how artists expressed and aroused feelings of love through gesture and facial expression, colour and shape, the context of place and narrative, the representation of bodies, and references to contemporary rituals and practices. It will examine the ways different forms of love, including affection, friendship, intimacy, erotic desire, jealousy and compassion were applied to various objects of love – such as family and kin, the divinity and saints, fatherlands and the self. It will consider how these representations created new understandings of love, which in turn influenced developments in the religious, political, cultural and domestic spheres.

Venue: Thursday and Friday - The University of Melbourne, Woodward Conference Centre, 10th floor, Melbourne Law (Building 106), 185 Pelham Street, Carlton VIC 3053 Venue: Saturday - The National Gallery of Victoria, Clemenger Auditorium, 180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3000

Costs:
Please register by 2 May for catering purposes. Unfortunately, registrations will not be available at the venue.

Full Reg: 3 days: Full $80, Students and unwaged $50

Daily Reg: Day one: Full $30, Students and unwaged $20 Day two: Full $30, Students and unwaged $20 Day three (at NGV): Full $40, Students and unwaged $25

Conference Dinner: Full $80, Students and unwaged $45 The Conference dinner will be held at the Carlton Wine Room on Thursday evening.

Speakers: David Areford (University of Massachusetts, Art History), Katie Barclay (University of Adelaide, History), Lisa Beaven (University of Melbourne, Art History), Jane Davidson (University of Melbourne, Musicology), Dagmar Eichberger (University of Heidelberg, Art History), Vivien Gaston ( University of Melbourne, Art History), Katrina Grant (Australian National University, Art History), Sally Holloway (Richmond University, London, History), Petra Kayser (NGV, Prints & Drawings), Dale Kent (University of Melbourne, History), David Marshall (University of Melbourne, Art History), Sophie Mattheisson (NGV, Art History), Jennifer Milam (University of Sydney, Art History), Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne, Cinema Studies), John Payne (NGV, Conservation), Mark Shepheard (University of Melbourne, Art History), Patricia Simons (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Art History), Robert Toft (University of Western Ontario), Miya Tokumitsu (University of Melbourne, Art History), Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne, Literature), Arvi Wattel (University of Western Australia, Art History) and Anna Welch (State Library of Victoria, History)

Presenters: Dr Rebe Taylor, Dr Kat Ellinghaus

Dr Kat Ellinghaus will discuss her most recent book, Blood Will Tell: Native Americans and Assimilation Policy. The book examines the processes, policies and conversations by which, after centuries of cross cultural relationships, blood quantum came to dominate conceptions of Native American identity in the first half of the twentieth century. Ellinghaus will talk about the many ways in which Native American people resisted, challenged and shaped the U.S. government's efforts to categorise them, as well as the methodological and ethical challenges of writing about this fraught political topic.

Dr Rebe Taylor will discuss her book, Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search for Human Antiquity which follows the journey of English gentleman, Ernest Westlake, who in 1908 packed a tent, a bicycle and forty tins of food and sailed to Tasmania. On mountains, beaches and in sheep paddocks Westlake collected over 13,000 Aboriginal stone tools. He believed he had found the remnants of an extinct race whose culture was akin to the most ancient Stone Age Europeans. But in the remotest corners of the island Westlake encountered living Indigenous communities and unwittingly documented what he could not perceive: an Aboriginal people with a complex culture and a deep past.

The two historians discuss their recent work in conversation with Professor Kate Darian-Smith.

Presenters: Professor Raimond Gaita

Professor Raimond Gaita argues that love plays both a constitutive and revelatory role in our understanding of the idea that human beings are, as we sometimes say, unique and irreplaceable. In addition, he takes love to play an important role in explaining what we are getting at when we talk about the Dignity – or the inalienable Dignity – of humanity or of individual persons. He stresses that there are different forms of love, all of them forms of the ethical, but not thereby of morality, and that some forms of love conflict with morality – or at least with non-moralistic conceptions of it.

This lecture is part of the 2017 SHAPS 'Love' Public Lecture Series.

Presenters: Dr Heather Jackson

View of the north wall of the sanctuary

It is important, in these days of destruction of the ancient heritage of Syria, to bring this site, excavated by the University of Melbourne and Australian National University in 1996-1998, into the limelight. This spectacular sanctuary, now irrevocably damaged, was carved out of the local limestone cliff above the Euphrates and could be accessed only from the river by steep steps. It housed two zones of near-life-size figures around the walls, nearly all women apparently carrying offerings. Larger figures include a seated mother with child; a full-sized stone bull in a niche waiting to be led to the blood altar in the middle of the floor; two large animals, either lions or horses, framing a lost centrepiece; and on the west wall, three possible tombs. The floor was originally covered in mosaic tesserae. The emphasis on women suggests a predominantly female cult or occasion, while the arrangement of the figures and the presence of the burials may suggest that this is the tomb of either a local queen or a high-born priestess. Certain features date it to the 2nd century AD, a period when the Romans were much in evidence on the Euphrates. However, the frontal stance of the figures and their style of dress are reminiscent of the sculptures of Palmyra, further south, as well as the ‘Parthian’ figures at Hatra. This is a truly multi-cultural monument, providing a glimpse of the knowledge we have lost about the resilience and vigour of the indigenous Syrian population, and their local culture.

This event is co-sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria.

Presenters: Professor Claudia Sode

Byzantine Seals, Photo by Prof. Claudia Sode

Given the inadequacy of other means of securing documents, individuals at almost all levels of Byzantine society used personal seals that they would change frequently to mark changes in their career or status. Some 80,000 of these survive for which the inscriptions indicate the owner’s name and title and the office held. But they also show an image which, far more than mere decoration, acts as a medium to convey identity by reference to specific iconographic subjects. By discussing how homonymity, gender, family devotions, offices, or urban affiliation have stimulated an individual’s choice of iconography, it is the aim of this paper to demonstrate what an essential body of material seals are for any investigation devoted to the question of identity in Byzantium.

This event is co-sponsored by the Classical Association of Victoria

Presenters: Henry Reese, Dr Lauren Meath, Sinead Manning, Stuart Flanagan, Marita May Dyson, Dr André Brett, Grace Barrand, Katherine Allen

In this special session for the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies (SHAPS) postgraduate Work in Progress Day, acoustic performances by Melbourne folk band the Orbweavers (Marita May Dyson and Stuart Flanagan) will be interspersed with discussion by an interdisciplinary postgraduate panel.

The Orbweavers are a Melbourne folk band whose work draws on a love of history, science, museums and archives. Their work offers an example of how ideas and research can be communicated in creative ways, and with a view to engaging a wide range of audiences. The panel will explore the opportunities and problems posed by song, performance, and other alternative modes, genres and media, for engaging with and communicating research material and findings.

The panel will feature Kate Allan (History and Philosophy of Science), Grace Barrand (Cultural Materials Conservation), Sinead Manning (Classics and Archaeology), Dr Lauren Meath (Jewish Studies) and Henry Reese (History).

The session will be chaired by Dr Andre Brett (University of Wollongong).

The panel will be the final session in the 2017 SHAPS postgraduate Work in Progress Day, which will run all day on Monday 23 October.

Members of the public are very welcome to attend this and other Work in Progress Day sessions; a full program will be made available on the SHAPS website closer to the date.

Presenters: Professor Lyndal Roper

Martin Luther regularly labelled superstition, Catholic dogma and the beliefs of the Turks and the Jews as ‘dreams’. ‘Lauter somnia’, pure dreams, was one of his favourite insults, and he liked nothing better than to debunk them. Yet Luther was also fascinated by signs and portents, and though he often joked about dreams, he too noted important dreams. Dreams also happened to be recorded at key turning points of the Reformation, and they give rare insight into Luther’s deepest anxieties and feelings. Discussed collectively, Luther and his followers used dream interpretations to communicate concerns they did not discuss explicitly. This lecture explores how historians can make use of dreams to understand the subjectivity of people in the past.

Professor Lyndal Roper is Regius Professor of History, Oriel College, University of Oxford, and one of the world’s most renowned historians of early modern times.

This lecture marks the 1517–2017 quincentenary of the European Reformation, set in motion by Martin Luther in the German university town of Wittenberg.

The lecture is co-hosted by the History Discipline of the University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Dr Victor Fernández Soriano

This public lecture examines how human rights advocates such as Amnesty International, international lawyers and government officials developed emotion-based strategies in their campaigns to generate opposition to state-sponsored use of torture.

It is sponsored by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Presenters: Professor Kim Sterelny

We differ from other mammals, and even other great apes, in many striking ways. We are much more cooperative than any other mammal; in particular, we cooperate with those who are not close relatives. Also, almost all of us recognise the existence of social norms that shape the lives of our social partners, and almost all of us feel some inclination to respect those norms, even when we would better off ignoring them, or when no-one else would know whether we conformed or not.

Those working on the evolution of human cognition and social life are sure there is some important connection between these two facts. Professor Kim Sterelny agrees, and will make a specific proposal about when and why responding to social norms became important in human social life.

Presenters: Professor Paul Griffiths

‘Biological essentialism’ and ‘genetic essentialism’ are regarded as false and pernicious doctrines, especially when applied to human beings. But ‘essentialism’ can mean many things. Ideas proudly paraded as anti-essentialist in some disciplines would count as essentialist in others. This lecture reviews scientific findings about essentialism as a psychological phenomenon. It explores the very different reasons why the biological sciences, the social sciences and the humanities have all come to identify ‘essentialism’ as a problem.

Presenters: Professor Desmond Kharmawphlang

The sacred forests of Meghalaya, India are believed to be protected by a spiritual tutelary deity called U Ryngkew U Basa who, whenever he makes himself visible, takes the form of a tiger.

In many of these forests, religious ceremonies in the form of rituals and spring dances are performed in honour of the Ryngkew, who is perceived as master of the wilderness.

Apart from the elaborate and complex religious discourse associated with the sacred forest, there is also a huge corpus of tiger lore that has been generated for hundreds of years and is still in circulation. Tigers occupy a very significant role in Khasi mythology. While the tiger is admired, respected and revered, it is also feared.

Khasi folklore suggests a subtle convergence of several perceptual and emotional features of the relationship between humans and tigers. Often portrayed as a bitter enemy of humans, he is also believed to be their greatest benefactor. This has given rise to a spectacular belief in the weretiger or tigerman, this power being an attribute of rngiew, one of the components of the complete human embodiment.

This lecture will draw on Professor Kharmawphlang’s many years of fieldwork in the jungle villages of North Khasi Hills, where he has encountered men and women who are reputed to have the power to become tigers.

Image: Jim Corbett's Man Eaters of Kumaon

Presenters: Dr Daniel Halliday

Join author Daniel Halliday for the launch of his book The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath (Oxford University Press, 2018).

To be formally launched by Professor Adrian Little, Professor of Political Theory, University of Melbourne.

The Inheritance of Wealth examines the moral foundations of the right to bequeath wealth, and of the restriction of this right through an inheritance tax. The book argues that some degree of taxation is justified, both on egalitarian and utilitarian grounds. In a world of growing wealth inequality, and with inheritance wholly untaxed in Australia, the problem has increasing contemporary significance. At the same time, the book recovers some important historical ideas, including the proposals of Italian economist Eugenio Rignano.

Presenters: Professor Evelyn Welch Professor of Renaissance Studies and Provost (Arts & Sciences)

This lecture will explore the ways emotion was understood on the body’s surface and how this was represented both materially and visually in early modern Europe.

Based on traditional medical theories, early modern skin was often described as a ‘fishing net’, something that held the body in place and offered a decorative surface but had no function of its own. At the same time, the body’s surface also told you about its interior wellbeing. Learning to read the body meant both examining the exterior and sampling the interior’s waste products ranging from urine to hair and tears.

This approach was as true of animals as it was of people. Manuals described how to read faces and skin, and argued for and against blushing. You could also predict astrological futures by reading the lines on foreheads as well as on hands (a topic known as chiromancy) and even predict fate according to the number and site of spots and moles. Even more importantly, however, was the ability to combine all these forms of inspections with the ability to diagnose understanding humoural disorders ranging from love-sickness, a form of melancholy, to an excess of blood leading to anger.

Presenters: Professor David Christian

The recent burst of talk about fake news encourages us once again to think carefully about what we mean by ‘truth’, and how we know when we are dealing with ‘truth’. In this lecture, Professor Christian will discuss the nature of truth from the perspective of big history, which links ideas from many different disciplines in order to construct a modern account of the history of everything, a modern discipline. Big history can be thought of as the attempt to tease out a modern equivalent of the origin stories that have guided the search for truth in all traditional societies. What has ‘truth’ meant in different human societies? And what does it mean within different scholarly disciplines, from cosmology to chemistry to biology and history?

Looking at different understandings of truth forces us to move beyond simple dichotomies between truth and falsehood, and towards a less stable but more realistic middle ground in which we work with truth as probability and approximation, but vital nonetheless. That sense of truth is, after all, anchored in our biological nature. As living organisms, getting some grip on the truth is a matter of life and death. But we do not seek absolute or total truth because the cost of certainty is prohibitive. In the real world, the truths we seek are local and approximate, like maps of the Moscow underground. Bits are missing and not all the details are accurate, but they work pretty well most of the time and they provide precisely the sort of guidance we need in order to pursue our lives. Helping students towards this more nuanced idea of truth is a major challenge for educators of all kinds, and one of the major challenges of big history.

This is the annual Kathleen Fitzpatrick public lecture in History, the History contribution to the 2018 SHAPS 'Truth' Public Lecture series, and a History Council of Victoria public lecture. It will be followed by the announcement of the winner of the 2018 Ernest Scott prize.

Presenters: Professor Philip Pettit

Ideals of free speech, and related ideals of free science, were developed at a time when the danger was the despotism of a single, dictatorial voice, religious or political. They need rethinking at a time when a second type of danger is even more salient: a free-for-all of many, undisciplined voices.

Just as light pollution stops us from seeing the stars, so pollution of the news and science media stops us from tracking the truth. Worse, it invites us to wallow in our preferred view of the world, signing up to whatever view most appeals, whether about the origin of our species, our impact on planet earth or the nature of the universe. Freedom requires that we should be entitled to our own opinions, as Daniel Moynihan once said, but not that we be entitled to our own facts.

Presenters: Professor Louise A Hitchcock

Inaugural Professorial Lecture

This lecture examines the relationship between social and technological acceleration, class conflict, natural disaster and systems collapse in the ancient Mediterranean and modern western society through an examination of globalisation, populism and piracy.

Louise Hitchcock is Professor of Aegean Archaeology at the University of Melbourne.

Presenters: Professor Emeritus Gillian Triggs

While historically a good international citizen, Australia has failed over recent years to protect fundamental freedoms or to comply with its international human rights obligations. Australians no longer speak the language of human rights as we have become isolated from the human rights laws and jurisprudence of comparable nations; the courts struggle to find the legal tools to comply with the common law principle of legality; parliaments have failed in their traditional role of restraining the executive abuse of discretion; the various forms of media are swamped by false news, post truth and alternative facts. In this regressive environment, we have been unable to agree upon indigenous recognition, the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders imprisoned are unprecedented; we continue to detain without charge or trial hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees offshore; we hold indefinitely those unfit to stand trial; domestic violence, homelessness and elder abuse remain serious social problems.

Unlike every other democracy and common law country in the world, Australia has no Bill or Charter of Rights. Australia now needs a federally legislated Charter of Rights, at minimum, the so-called dialogue model, to provide a benchmark against which laws passed by Parliament and government discretions can be tested for compliance with the common law and our human rights treaties.

This SHAPS event commemorates the 10th Anniversary of the Greg Dening Memorial Lecture

Presenters: Dr Stefano Carboni

The common perception about Persian miniature painting – better described as book illustration because almost invariably it has a textual, literary or oral context – is that it is elegant, colourful, rather formal in composition, and overall restrained in the way the characters are emotionally involved in a particular moment of the story. Persian illustrators, however, had a clear set of tools and visual tropes to convey feelings such as surprise, love, grief, fear, heroism in the face of death, and many more.

Many of the stories told in poetic works by Firdausi, Jami and Nizami, all of which were often illustrated, are heavily charged with impossible love, death-defying trials, heroic quests and mystic ardour: the written language, often memorised by the reader, is the protagonist while the visual image provides in some way an oasis, a respite for the eye, breaking away from the incessant emotional narrative of the verses.

A great chapter for the visual representation of emotions, however, was written during the Ilkhanid (Mongol) period in Iran in the 14th century, a time during which all pictorial rules – if they previously existed – were subverted, and we can witness a full range of demonstrative engagement with the viewer.

This lecture is part of the From Melancholy to Euphoria: The Materialisation of Emotion in Middle Eastern Manuscripts Symposium, made possible by support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Presenters: Professor Robyn Sloggett AM

This symposium will examine the relationship between text, manuscript production (calligraphy and illumination) and the elicitation and excitation of emotions in this form of transmission of knowledge and beliefs.

The symposium is made possible by support from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Tickets: $100 for both days.

Presenters: Professor Pierre Serna

In the context of the celebration of Bastille Day, Professor Pierre Serna will explore how new ‘global’ perspectives are illuminating our understanding of the origins and outcomes of the French Revolution.

Professor Peter McPhee will introduce and comment on Pierre Serna’s lecture.

Presenters: Sharyn Volk, Fiona Moore

Object-based learning (OBL) is a mode of education which involves the use of authentic or replica objects in the learning environment. The University of Melbourne uses specimens, artefacts, artworks, manuscripts, rare books and archives in its OBL teaching. Since 2010 OBL has been used at the Ian Potter Museum of Art by the Academic Programs team who teach visual observation and describing to all disciplines and faculties at the University.

Research into OBL has found that the use of objects can inspire, inform, engage and motivate learners at all stages of their education. Engaging with objects encourages the use of all senses and helps develop the important skill of drawing conclusions based on examination of evidence. This multi-sensory approach also has proven to enhance the relationship between the learning experience and memory, creating long-lasting connections.

The Arts West OBL laboratories were opened in 2017. They provide greater access to the University of Melbourne’s many cultural collections for the purposes of teaching and research and offer students a unique learning space.

Join us for an exclusive look at these exceptional teaching spaces, which are otherwise not publicly accessible. In this masterclass Fiona Moore will introduce you to the object labs, and Sharyn Volk will lead a hands-on investigation allowing you the opportunity to engage with rare ancient artefacts out of their display cases.

Presenters: Professor David Chalmers

The 2018 Barry Taylor and David Lewis Philosophy Lecture.

The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why we think that there is a hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem is the problem of explaining how physical systems give rise to subjective experience. The hard problem typically contrasts with the easy problems of explaining behavior. There is one behavior with an especially close tie to the hard problem: we make verbal reports such as 'consciousness is puzzling' and 'there is a hard problem of consciousness'. The meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining these reports. The meta-problem is, strictly speaking, one of the easy problems, and solving it is a tractable empirical project for cognitive scientists. At the same time, a solution will almost certainly have consequences for the hard problem of consciousness. In this talk Professor Chalmers will lay out the meta-problem research program, he will examine potential solutions, and he will investigate the philosophical consequences.

The Barry Taylor and David Lewis Philosophy Lecture is an annual lecture held in honour of the late Barry Taylor and David Lewis.

Presenters: Professor Tim Parkin

Professor Parkin, the inaugural Elizabeth and James Tatoulis Chair in Classics at the University of Melbourne, makes a case for why classics matters in the 21st century and why it will continue to be vital in the future, both in Melbourne and around the world.

As both a classicist and a social historian of the ancient world, Professor Parkin’s research has focused primarily on the lives of ‘ordinary people’, with a tendency to move back over the life course: from old age to childhood, birth and conception. In this lecture he explores not only aspects of this research and teaching in social history, ancient languages, law, medicine and demography, but also his personal odyssey through the ancient world and back to Australasia, which he considers his true home.

Presenters: Professor Robyn Sloggett AO

What happens to truth when people cannot access their cultural, historic and scientific record?

The verification of histories, the development of identity and the iteration of the culture all require the existence of, and access to, the authentic cultural record. The right to know is enshrined in the basic principles of democracy but the ability to access information is framed, supported and in many instances privileged by race, region and socio-economic status.

In this lecture Professor Robyn Sloggett explores the ways in which risk to the preservation of cultural, historical and scientific records is situated within broader issues of climate change, regionalism and post colonialism.

This lecture is part of the 2018 School of Historical and Philosophical Studies Truth Public Lecture Series

Presenters: Ms Katie Wood, Mr Max Ogden, Mr Ken Mansell, Ms Jane Beattie, Professor Andrew Reeves, Professor Mark Edele, Dr Kate Murphy, Dr Jon Piccini, Professor Emeritus Phillip Deery, Laureate Professor Stuart Macintyre AO

In August 1968, the Soviet Union sent troops into Czechoslovakia to end the liberalising regime of Alexander Dubcek; the incident and its aftermath became known as the Prague Spring. The events in the Soviet bloc were part of an international wave of uprisings and movements throughout 1968 that would have a profound impact on the Australian Left. The Communist Party of Australia was one of the few in the international movement to publicly condemn the Soviet action. CPA leader Bernie Taft knew Dubcek personally and was instrumental in convincing the Party to take such a stand.

On the 50th anniversary of the Prague Spring, the University of Melbourne Archives is pleased to announce the opening of the Bernie Taft collection. The collection contains over 100 boxes ranging from the 1950s-1990s, comprising correspondence, personal notes, movement documents and much more. It will be one of the most significant collections on the history of the Australian Left to become available for research in recent years.

To mark these events, the University of Melbourne Archives and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies will be hosting a free public symposium looking at the legacy of 1968, Bernie Taft and other political collections held in the Archives.

The symposium coincides with the Melbourne launch of the Routledge Studies in Radical History and Politics edition, The Far Left in Australia Since 1945 edited by Jon Piccini, Evan Smith and Matthew Worley. The launch will be held at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, which will be showing the State of the Union exhibition.

Presenters: Professor Antonis Kotsonas

The relationship between the Homeric epics and archaeology has been approached through the lens of Homeric archaeology, which involved matching the epics with the archaeological record and identifying realia of Homer’s heroes. However, a range of new approaches have recently revolutionized the field.

Drawing from these approaches, Professor Antonis Kotsonas offers a regional and diachronic analysis of Homeric stories about Crete, an assessment of the reception of these stories by the island’s inhabitants throughout antiquity, and an account of their impact on Medieval to modern literature and art. He finds that Cretan interest in Homer peaks in the Hellenistic period, but also argues for the much earlier familiarity of some Cretans with stories that underlie the Homeric epics. This argument relies on an analysis of the archaeological assemblage of a Knossian tomb of the 11th century BCE, which included a range of arms that is exceptional for both Aegean archaeology and the Homeric epics.

In the epics, this equipment is carried only by the Knossian hero Meriones, whose poetic persona can be traced back to the Late Bronze Age on philological and linguistic grounds. Based on this, and on current understandings of performance at death, Kotsonas argues that the Knossian burial assemblage was staged to reference the persona of Meriones, therefore suggesting the familiarity of some Cretans with early poetry that eventually filtered into the Homeric epics.

Image: Crete-Egypt, three thousand years of cultural links (2001), Hellenic Ministry of Culture, copyright Heraklion Archaeological Museum

Presenters: Professor Michael Belgrave

In 1863, diggers in Bendigo, Ballarat and Mt Alexander and clerks in Melbourne were being offered land grants as inducements to cross the Tasman and fight against Māori in the Waikato Militia. With the war now two months old, Māori were almost always depicted as rebellious savages by correspondents in the Victorian press. Over 1,200 signed up from Victoria alone. Suppressing so-called rebellions and confiscating land was a common strategy in England’s imperial expansion. It was just another of ‘England’s little wars’, as the missionary, Octavius Hadfield, had called the earlier campaign in Taranaki.

But this was not supposed to happen in New Zealand. New Zealand was to be different from all those European colonising enterprises that had driven Aboriginal peoples to near extinction. The colony was created in 1840, at a humanitarian moment, when the needs and rights of Indigenous communities were to be given a genuine priority in British policy making. The moment lasted long enough for the intervention in New Zealand to be framed in the benevolent provisions of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, and in promises and policies aimed at protecting Māori from colonists. Yet two decades later, those colonists were engaged in suppressing Māori independence with the aid of an imperial military force and internationally recruited militia.

This lecture will consider the failure of humanitarianism in New Zealand. It will consider humanitarianism not just as a series of ideas, but as a network of friendships and personal connections, which linked individual Māori to missionaries and European political figures. While some of these relationships were sufficiently robust to continue up until 1863, a great many others collapsed. Exploring both successful and failed relationships between Māori and Europeans in New Zealand helps us to understand why the outbreak of war again in 1863 was described by many of its victims as a betrayal, a betrayal of the promises 1840, and betrayal by people who had once been friends.

The Ernest Scott Annual Lecture is presented by Michael Belgrave, winner of the 2018 Ernest Scott prize in History for his book Dancing with the King (AUP 2017).

Presenters: Associate Professor Frederik Vervaet

In April 44 BCE, barely two months after the Ides of March, the young C Octavius (born 63 BCE) arrived in Italy to claim the political inheritance of his adoptive father, the slain dictator Julius Caesar. Some fourteen years later, his final victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt in the summer of 30 BCE paved the way for almost 45 years of undisputed mastery over the entire Roman world.

This lecture endeavours to reappraise the momentous career of the man who would be known as Imperator Caesar Augustus from January 27 and is widely considered as Rome’s first Emperor. The chosen approach will be to confront the ‘alternative facts’ of his ‘post-truth’ retrospective in his Res Gestae, the official record of achievements he divulged in 13 CE, one year before his death, with the extant historical sources. This exercise will reveal his breathtaking distortions of the truth and offer valuable insights into authoritarian statecraft and mass communication.

Image: Bust of Emperor Augustus (photo 2017 by F. Vervaet Rome public museo)

Presenters: Professor Nicholas Roe

Keats’ first published poem, his sonnet To Solitude, announced a creative conjunction of places and verbal patterns that would reappear in nearly everything he wrote. Each of the four books of Endymion was written at a different place – at Carisbrooke, Margate, Hampstead, Oxford, Burford Bridge and Box Hill – and those places shaped the verbal landscapes in his poem. The opening lines, for instance, are set on the Isle of Wight near Carisbrooke Castle; I stood tiptoe describes scenes and sights on Hampstead Heath; Sleep and Poetry surveys Leigh Hunt's study at the Vale of Health; Isabella turns Teignmouth into Tuscany; and Lamia, set in classical Corinth, draws some scenic props from the ancient cathedral city, Winchester. Even the cider press in To Autumn had a local habitation, in the precincts of St Cross Hospital.

In this illustrated talk, Professor Nicholas Roe wants to salute an energetic, physically active Keats for whom 'footing slow' through the mountains of Scotland stirred his imagination and the iambic pulse of his poetry. Hopefully we will start to see Keats as a poet of place – as much as, and maybe more than, William Wordsworth – who never wrote a sonnet on the summit of Ben Nevis.

Seminar hosted by the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Contemporary Culture research unit, and the English and Theatre Studies Program in the School of Culture and Communication, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.

Image: Historical portraits; some notes on the painted portraits of celebrated characters of England, Scotland and Ireland (1897) (detail)

Presenters: Professor Marcella Frangipane

The 2018 Marion Adams Memorial Lecture

What can archaeological discoveries tell us about the role played by urbanisation in the formation, development and crisis of the earliest centralised and hierarchical societies in the Near East?

Drawing on archaeological findings in modern-day Turkey, Syria and Iraq, this lecture will discuss how the early societies of the Near East show a great deal of variability in different regions and cultural environments in terms of settlement patterns, the role of ruling elites and the degree of their control over the economy, and the types of political and economic systems in place.

In this lecture, Professor Marcella Frangipane will reconsider the role of urbanisation in the development of Near Eastern civilizations, demonstrating different trajectories in different environments and social contexts. She will argue, however, for the crucial importance of the growth of 'cities' in the solidity of early centralized political systems, and demonstrate that its presence or absence, or its stronger or weaker development, appears as a basic factor of stability or instability – development or collapse – of the early Near Eastern state societies in the 4th millennium BC.

Professor Marcella Frangipane is Full Professor of Archaeology (Prehistory) at the Sapienza University of Rome, and Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Corresponding Member of the DAI in Berlin, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and the Archaeological Institute of America.

Presenters: Associate Professor Andrew Jamieson, Dr Claudia Sagona, Dr Catherine Longford, Dr Hyun Jin Kim, Professor Chris Mackie, Professor Barbara Helwing, Professor Marcella Frangipane

An Event in Honour of Emeritus Professor Tony (Antonio) Sagona.

An emerging shift in the field of Ancient Near Eastern Studies has seen a change of geographical emphasis away from more traditional areas of study to places that were previously misinterpreted as less significant peripheries. In this context, Tony Sagona’s early and enduring focus on Eastern Turkey and the Southern Caucasus now seems especially prescient. This event is a celebration of Tony’s outstanding career and of his legacy, which is reflected in the University of Melbourne’s continuing work on the frontiers of his discipline.

Presenters: Professor Greg Restall

Our thoughts and our conversations are filled with generalisations. From everyday trivialities such as birds fly or trams are crowded to contested claims such as women are oppressed or Muslims are peace-loving, we think and communicate using generalisations and stereotypes. This way of understanding the world is useful and pervasive, but at the same time, it has significant limitations.

In this lecture, Professor Restall will explain some of the surprising features of these generalisations. Then he will apply some of the tools developed by philosophers of language over the last decades, in order to understand why generalisations and stereotypes are so pervasive; why they can behave so strangely and can sometimes lead us astray; and finally, to learn how we can use generalisations and stereotypes productively in our thinking and our communication.

Presenters: Dr Dinah Eastop

Like walls, string figures delineate space. Unlike walls, string figures are easily manipulated.

The 2019 SHAPS Public Lecture Series will explore the theme of ‘Walls’— the walls we build to exclude and contain the Other, to control the movement of people, bodies, information, capital, ideas. Speakers will approach the theme from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, we look at the historical rise and fall of walls; we examine the wall as a metaphor for organising space and societies; we look at walls visible and invisible, physical and mental; and at the histories of movements to destroy walls, and to imagine and create alternatives to walls.

The series opens with reflections by the internationally renowned textile conservator, Dinah Eastop, on the transformative properties of different materials and media for delineating space. Dr Eastop will discuss how spaces and bodies interact, through an exploration of Haddon’s string figures: a collection of ‘cat’s cradles’ gathered in the Torres Strait by anthropologist A. C. Haddon and acquired by the British Museum in 1889.

Image: Dr Dinah Eastop

Presenters: Paul O'Halloran, Janet Turpie-Johnstone, Professor Robyn Sloggett AM, Margo Neale, Dr Jaye Early, Tiriki Onus, Dr Elizabeth Burns Coleman

Appropriation is a part of the artist's creative toolkit. When is it wrong to appropriate art?

Icons, patterns and objects that are part of a culture are sometimes used by art-makers and curators. They might be re-presented with or without the collaboration or permission of the source. And there may be little or no transformation of the original.

Is the appropriation of Indigenous art and knowledge different from other forms of cultural appropriation?

How might appreciation of contemporary Indigenous arts be different from objects that have secret or sacred significance?

Is there a point where something is transformed enough to no longer require the permission of the owners?

What counts as collaboration and permission anyway?

Does curating always involve some transformation? When does a curator become an art-maker?

Not all problems have answers but there are always good questions to be asked. This panel is different. The focus is on finding the questions on art appropriation.

Add your questions in your RSVP while registering, and we will try to include them in the program.

This event is presented in partnership with the Wilin Centre for Indigenous Arts and Cultural Development, the Centre of Visual Art, Faculty of Arts and School of Historical & Philosophical Studies.

Presenters: Dr Andrew O'Shaughnessy

2019 Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Lecture

Thomas Jefferson regarded his founding of the University of Virginia as one of his three greatest achievements in life, together with the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

Dr Andrew O’Shaughnessy will share how Jefferson’s ideas continue to have relevance to public education in the United States to this very day.

Thomas Jefferson was intimately involved with every aspect of creating the University of Virginia. The execution of this project revealed his greatest talents as a lawyer who drafted the legislation; as a surveyor who personally mapped the grounds; as a politician who cajoled the assembly into supporting him against furious opposition; as an architect who designed the layout, chose the building materials and corresponded with the craftsman; and as an intellectual who developed an innovative curriculum, suggested the books for the library and the criteria for selecting the faculty. This lecture will argue that his vision contained many features that were unique within the United States and more progressive than what would be known as the Ivy League Schools.

A reception will be held immediately following the lecture in the Atrium Foyer of the Arts West Building.

This lecture is presented by The Research Unit in 'Enlightenment, Romanticism, Contemporary Culture' in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne.

Image: The University of Virginia, Charlottesville ©Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.