SHAPS Digest (May 2023)

Ángel Alcalde (History) presented for Pleibéricos, an online event program for the presentation of books on Iberian Studies. Along with José Colmeiro (University of Auckland), Jane Hanley (Macquarie University), Alfredo Martínez Expósito (University of Melbourne) + Rubén Pérez Hidalgo (University of Sydney), Ángel presented for a special session on Iberian Studies in the Antipodes, and discussed his recent edited collection, The Crucible of Francoism: Combat, Violence, and Ideology in the Spanish Civil War (Liverpool University Press), co-edited with Foster Chamberlain and Francisco J Leira-Castiñeira.

Mark Edele (Hansen Chair in History) reviewed Serhii Plokhy’s new book, The Russo-Ukrainian War (Allen Lane), for The Conversation.

The HPS Podcast, founded by Fiona Fidler (HPS), presented and edited Samara Greenwood (PhD candidate, HPS), and produced by HPS Honours student Indigo Keel, released on 31 May. The podcast shares contemporary research in History and Philosophy of Science, covering a wide range of topics, for anyone with a fascination for history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, human inquiry and those who simply wish to broaden their minds.

Julia Hurst (History/The Australian Centre) wrote, with Peter Prince, for The Conversation, ‘“Habits of Civilised Life”: How One State Forced Indigenous People to Meet Onerous Conditions to Obtain Citizenship’.

Zoë Laidlaw (History) was interviewed about Australian legacies of British Slavery on ABC Radio National.

Zoë Laidlaw also featured in an Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Impact Case Study on the organisation’s website. The WA Legacies of Slavery project team, including interns from the Digitisation Centre, used the Time-Layered Cultural Map (TLCMap) tool to create a visualisation of the project, connecting Australian colonists with Caribbean slaveowners and mapping their journeys between the two locations. The TLCMap was developed by an ARC LIEF Grant with an Australia-wide group of scholars, including Andy May, and has received further LIEF funding in 2023.

Marilyn Lake (Honorary, History), reviewed Michelle Arrow (ed.), Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution (NewSouth Books) for Australian Book Review.

Tamara Lewit (Honorary, Classics & Archaeology) collaborated with her sister, Anna Ciddor, on the newly released novel, A Message through Time, the companion to their 2021, The Boy who Stepped Through Time.

Kate Lynch (HPS) was interviewer and guest producer for ‘De-extinction’, Part 1 and Part 2 on ABC Radio National’s The Philosopher’s Zone.

Gene technology has brought us to the point where it’s theoretically possible to bring back extinct animals from the ‘species grave’. But the science is not straightforward – and neither is the philosophy. There are complicated questions of environmental ethics involved, as well as metaphysical questions that have to do with identity. Is a reverse genetically engineered woolly mammoth really a woolly mammoth?

Caroline Tully (Honorary, Classics & Archaeology) was a guest on the YouTube channel Drawing Down the Stars, talking about her work on religion and spirituality in the ancient Aegean.

Academic Publications

Louise Hitchcock (Classics & Archaeology), ‘”Sharing Your Adventures Has Been An Interesting Experience”: Indiana Jones and Professional Archaeology’, in Dean A Kowalski (ed.), Indiana Jones and Philosophy: Why Did It Have to Be Socrates? (Wiley & Sons)

What does it mean to choose wisely? Can heroes seek fortune and glory? Why does Indiana Jones take a leap of faith? Do Indy’s adventures provide him evidence of the supernatural? Should we hide the Ark of the Covenant in a military-controlled warehouse? Why are museums so important to archaeology?

Indiana Jones and Philosophy takes you on a whirlwind journey to investigate some of the most enduring questions about the human condition. You’ll read about how Indy has wronged Marion Ravenwood, how a virtuous person would make amends, the strides Indy makes to repair his relationship with his father, why Indy distinguishes fact from truth when he pursues archaeological treasures, and much more. With trusty guides such as Aristotle, Camus, Kant, and Nietzsche at your side, you’ll consider possible answers to these questions and see Indiana Jones in a whole new light.

Grants

Matthew Champion (History) has been awarded a Dyason Fellowship for 2024 to bring out Dr Beatriz Marín-Aguilera from the University of Liverpool to work together on the project, Temporality, Indigeneity and Encounter in the Early Modern World.

Andrew May (History), together with three Indian co-investigators, has secured an Australia-India ‘Unnati’ Research Collaboration Grant, funded by the Australian Government Department of Education “to boost and deepen research collaborations between Australia and India in four research fields that have been determined by the Australian and Indian governments as mutual priorities”. The project is titled Digital Shillong: Cultural Heritage Applications for Mapping, Visualising, and Interpreting Urban Historical Data, and was in the priority research field of ‘Digital humanities and ‘Intelligent Futures’.

The Indian co-investigators are:

• Professor Desmond L Kharmwaphlang (Department of Cultural and Creative Studies, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong)
• Dr Madeline Yvonne Tham (Convener of the Meghalaya Chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage)
• Nathaniel D N Majaw (Project Director, Northeast India Audio-Visual Archive, Department of Mass Media, St. Anthony’s College, Shillong)

 

Research Higher Degree Completions

Leonard D’Cruz (PhD in Philosophy, 2023) ‘Foucault and Normative Political Philosophy‘

This thesis brings Michel Foucault’s work into dialogue with the tradition of normative political philosophy inaugurated by John Rawls. More specifically, it draws on Foucault’s ideas to develop an original approach to normative theorising that emphasises the importance of situated insights in reconstructing our normative political concepts. With this goal in mind, my thesis makes a systematic contribution to two distinct bodies of literature. First, it offers a critical account of Foucault’s underlying methodology. More specifically, it clarifies several controversial methodological questions that are frequently raised with respect to Foucault’s work. These include whether his historicist mode of critique successfully overcomes transcendental philosophy, whether his power-knowledge analytic is supported by a satisfying epistemology, and whether his normative commitments can be reflexively accounted for and then reconciled with his aspiration to develop a rigorous descriptive method. Second, it develops an original approach to normative political philosophy by leveraging these insights into Foucault’s methodology. I refer to my proposed framework as the situated approach to normative political philosophy. This approach conceives of normativity as immanent to power, and thus treats our normative concepts as pragmatic tools that we use to negotiate real contexts of action. In this way, I argue that normative political philosophy needs to become more sensitive to the way our normative standards and processes of justification have been shaped by relations of power.

On this basis, I suggest that my broadly Foucauldian approach offers an improvement on both the dominant paradigm of ideal theory as well as the resurgent tradition of political realism. In this way, I attempt to push Foucault’s work towards a more systematic approach to normative political questions concerning distributive justice and state legitimacy. As part of this effort, I will locate the situated approach in relation to recent methodological debates in analytic political philosophy. These debates cover a significant amount of ground, including a) the question of whether ideal theory can guide action; b) whether ideal theory is sufficiently critically reflexive; c) disputes over the nature of political normativity and its relationship to morality; and d) the role that general principles should play in framing specific political situations. With respect to these questions, my goal is to show how the situated approach constitutes an improvement on its main methodological alternatives within normative political philosophy.

Supervisors: Dr Andrew Inkpin, Dr Knox Peden

Tonia Sellers (MA in History, 2023) ‘“Romantic, Idealistic, Fiercely Partisan”: Emotion and the Communist Party of Australia, 1920–1945′

This thesis questions and explores the role of emotion in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), 1920–1945. During this time, the CPA grew from a small fringe group to the dominant force in Australia’s Far-Left, and members’ lived experiences of Party life varied widely. Through the use of oral history interviews, autobiographies, and CPA publications, this research seeks to understand how Party authorities wanted members to experience emotions, and how they hoped these emotions would manifest in individuals’ behaviour. It demonstrates ways that individual members responded to the

Supervisor: Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy, Professor Sean Scalmer

Research Higher Degree Milestones

Bronwyn Beech Jones (PhD Candidate in History), ‘Textual Worlds: Rethinking Self, Community, and Activism in Colonial-Era Sumatran Women’s Newspaper Archives’ (PhD completion seminar)

This thesis examines how Sumatran women and girls articulated their experiences, aspirations, and senses of self and community in three Malay-language women’s periodicals published between 1912 and 1929. It is the first sustained analysis of these publications as archives of the perspectives and lives of women and girls in colonial-era Indonesia. Tracing letters from West Sumatra, North Sumatra, Bengkulu, Jambi, and Aceh, the project probes how writers fashioned forms of maternalist solidarity which shifted into calls for women’s rights and more organised activism. The thesis contributes to archipelagic and decolonial feminist approaches and histories of print culture in colonial contexts.

Events

The annual Kathleen Fitzpatrick Lecture for 2023, ‘On Race and Reinscription: Writing Enslaved Women Back into the Early Modern Archive’, was presented in May by Jennifer L Morgan, Professor of History at New York University, and author of Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic (Duke University Press, 2021).

The work of Grimwade Conservation Centre, together with Ballarat Mechanics Institute (BMI), featured in the Living Heritage at the Ballarat Mechanics Institute Exhibition for Ballarat Heritage Festival Festival. This work “perform[ed] urgently required conservation work on a number of significant items from the Heritage Victoria registered collection … [and] was carried out as part of a Victorian Government Living Heritage Grant awarded in 2021, with work completed in December 2022.”

The second undergraduate SHAPS Ball was held in May at the Hellenic Museum. After the great success of last year’s Hellenic Ball, it was back bigger, better, and spookier than ever. The theme this year was Memento Mori and students came dressed to the nines for the underworld, with the customary drachma for the ferryman.

The Ball’s organising committee consisted of Abigail Banister-Jones, Peggy Lucas, Hannah Lewis, Andrew Lim (MUCLASS), Teo Haines and Julia Rose (UniMelb History Society), Porter Mattinson and Nysh Toktonazarova (Melbourne University Philosophy Society), and Tahlia Antrobus from Chariot.

Check out their amazing costumes on the MUCLASS Facebook page with fabulous images by Ed Neagu.

SHAPS staff, fellows, students, alumni: if you have news items for the monthly SHAPS digest, email us the details.