SHAPS Digest (July 2023)
Michael Arnold (HPS) was interviewed for an article in The Guardian about rising burial costs.
Liam Byrne (Honorary, History) launched a new online newsletter on Australian political history and the history of the labour movement. To connect with the anniversary of John Curtin’s death, the newsletter opened with an article looking at the political lessons from Curtin’s political life.
Liam Byrne and Emma Shortis (RMIT) published a piece in the Conversation on ‘wokeness’ and conservatives in the US.
Louise Hitchcock (Classics & Archaeology) reviewed the new Indiana Jones movie for Neos Kosmos.
Ashleigh Green (Teaching Associate, Classics & Archaeology) delivered a talk for the Paideia Institute on her recently published book, Birds in Roman Life and Myth (Routledge 2023).
In Roman augury and auspices, birds were among the foremost signs by which the gods communicated their assent or displeasure with a proposed action. Public auspices had to be taken before important events and before a magistrate could exercise his authority, while private auspices could be taken by individuals whenever they wished for guidance. This talk outlines how Romans took auspices from wild birds, which birds were chiefly observed during the ritual, and what each augural bird signified. It then looks at military auspices, the auspicia ex tripudiis, which were taken by observing the feeding patterns of ‘sacred chickens’. Generals had to consult the chickens at many critical junctures in the field, including before they engaged the enemy in battle. By exploring the ‘sacred chickens’ within the wider context of augural birds, we can discover the origin of this strange ritual and explain why and how the Romans used chickens in this way.
Julia Hurst (History/The Australian Centre) contributed to the new SBS documentary series Who The Bloody Hell Are We? – a journey into Australia’s multicultural past to uncover stories that the history books left out. The series is available to watch on SBS On Demand. It was produced by Unimelb History alumnus Nick McInerney.
Tamara Lewit (Honorary, Classics & Archaeology) appeared on ABC Radio Sydney to discuss her research interest in Roman river transport.
Pete Millwood (newly appointed Lecturer in East Asian History) was interviewed and featured in Episodes Two and Thee of the BBC Radio 4 documentary Chinese Ping-Pong Power.
New episodes of the HPS Podcast were released, featuring interviews with Fallon Mody on biography and history; Rachael Brown on values in science; Samara Greenwood on the societal contexts of science; and Caleb Hazelwood on scientific metaphysics.
Daniel Nellor‘s book, What Are They Thinking? Conversations with Australian Philosophers (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2023) was reviewed for the Sydney Morning Herald for their ‘Eight best books this week’ section. The book features interviews with ten philosophers working in Australian universities today, including SHAPS philosophers Margaret Cameron, Chris Cordner and Dan Halliday, discussing the nature of philosophy and why it’s valuable, and thinking through some of the big questions on their minds. What Are They Thinking? will be launched at SHAPS on 16 August.
SHAPS’s Jenny Spinks, Charles Zika and Matthew Champion have contributed to the exhibition Albrecht Dürer’s Material World at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The exhibition, based on the ARC project of the same name, forms part of a collaboration led by the University of Melbourne, with University of Manchester and University of Heidelberg, that is examining the Dürer collections in Melbourne, Manchester and Nuremberg. The exhibition has been getting some excellent press, with two Guardian pieces: one an overview and the other a review of the exhibition. Jenny, Charles and Matthew also delivered papers at the exhibition opening symposium.
Charles Sowerwine (Professor Emeritus, History) commented, in his capacity as Royal Historical Society of Victoria Heritage Committee President, on neglected areas of Flinders Street Station and called for a comprehensive restoration in the Herald Sun and on 9 News Melbourne. The RHSV noted:
One area of particular interest is the Degraves Street subway. With a staggering 20,000 people traversing the tunnel each week, there’s an opportunity for a major cleanup of the subway tiles, which Sowerwine states if properly restored, could rival the allure of the world’s finest metro systems, taking inspiration from the likes of France. Sowerwine also emphasised the need for a heritage consultant to ensure accessibility and functionality within a modern environment.
Academic Publications
Mark Edele (Hansen Chair in History, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Arts), Russia’s War against Ukraine: The Whole Story (Melbourne University Press, 2023)
An examination of the causes of the Russian invasion and its implications for the future.
In February 2022 Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a fellow East Slav state with much shared history. Mark Edele, a world authority on the history of the Soviet Union, explains why and how this conflict came about. He considers competing historical claims and arguments with authority and lucidity. His primary focus, however, is on the different paths taken by these two former members of the Soviet Union.
Since the implosion of that state in 1991, Ukraine has developed a vibrant, if often troubled, democracy. For an increasingly dictatorial Russian political elite, including but not limited to Vladimir Putin, Ukraine has appeared more and more threatening. Humiliated by the degradation of Russia’s international standing, feeling betrayed by an expanding NATO and anxious about democratic revolutions in the former Soviet space, Putin and his allies have increasingly retreated into a resentful ultra-nationalism. Dreams of past imperial glory stand in place of any attempt to solve the problems of the present.
Mark Edele‘s book Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society, 1941–1991 (OUP) was also published in Russian translation this month.
The first publication from the Australian Research Council project ‘Albrecht Dürer’s Material World – in Melbourne, Manchester and Nuremberg‘ has now appeared in print with Manchester University Press. Edward Wouk (Manchester) and Jenny Spinks (Hansen Associate Professor in History) have co-edited the volume Albrecht Dürer’s Material World, a catalogue to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the Whitworth Gallery, University of Manchester.
The volume incorporates a series of essays written by project team members Matthew Champion, Jenny Spinks and Charles Zika (SHAPS), Dagmar Eichberger (Heidelberg), Sasha Handley, Stefan Hanß and Edward Wouk (Manchester), with additional contributions by Holly Fletcher and Imogen Holmes Roe (Manchester), and Larry Silver (Pennsylvania). This volume offers a new perspective on Albrecht Dürer, one of the most important figures of the German Renaissance, as an intense observer of the worlds of manufacture, design and trade that fill his graphic art. It explores understudied aspects of Dürer’s art and practice, including his attentive examination of objects of daily domestic use, his involvement in economies of local manufacture and exchange, the microarchitectures of local craft and his attention to cultures of natural and philosophical inquiry and learning.
Mia Martin Hobbs (PhD in History 2018, now Deakin University), ‘Healing Journeys: Veterans, Trauma, and the Return to Vietnam’ in Journal of American History
From 1981 to the mid-2010s thousands of US veterans returned to Vietnam on ‘healing journeys’. Drawing on original oral history interviews and media archives, this article historicises their journeys and, in doing, untangles distinct conceptualisations of Vietnam trauma, each generating different approaches to healing: from anti-war atonement, to exposure therapies, to battlefield pilgrimages commemorating the war as a ‘noble cause’. Historians of the war will recognise that each conceptualisation of trauma/healing reflected a key historiographical interpretation of the Vietnam War. Ultimately, however, the story of healing in Vietnam was defined by the media, which circulated a flattened narrative arc of morally ambiguous suffering and heroic victimhood. Through this narrative, the US positioned normalised relations and Vietnamese reconstruction as a story of US redemption.
Gijs Tol (Classics & Archaeology), ‘The Archaic Countryside Revisited: A Ceramic Approach to the Study of Archaic Rural Infill in Latium Vetus’, in Jeremy Armstrong and Aaron Rhodes-Schroder (eds), Adoption, Adaption, and Innovation in Pre-Roman Italy: Paradigms for Cultural Change (Brepols).
This chapter is the end result of over a decade of thinking (and many discussions with colleagues) about the degree and character of ruralisation that accompanied the development of large, monumental urban centres in Archaic Central Italy
Awards
Marilyn Lake (Professorial Fellow, History) was recognised with a Australian Historical Association (AHA) Lifetime Achievement Award. Announced at the 2023 AHA conference, the award honoured Professor Lake’s ‘distinguished contributions to historical scholarship in a wide range of fields, education, mentoring and academic leadership, with special reference to her pioneering role in women’s, gender and transnational history, and her service to the Australian Historical Association in various roles including as President.’
Professor Lake was also granted Life Membership in recognition of her service to the AHA over many years.
Pat Grimshaw (Emeritus Professor, History) also received a 2023 Australian Historical Association (AHA) Lifetime Achievement Award. The award recognised Professor Grimshaw’s ‘distinguished contributions to historical scholarship in a wide range of fields, education, mentoring and academic leadership in history and the humanities more generally, with special reference to her role in pioneering women’s history in Australia.’
Freg (James) Stokes (PhD in History, 2022) is the winner of the inaugural AHA General History Thesis Prize 2023. The judges described the work as:
A remarkable thesis that tackles a highly original topic. Empirically rich, theoretically adventurous, the thesis shows a depth and difficulty of research that includes time in the archives and fieldwork, and extensive use of non-English language sources. It ties together novel archival research, work with Indigenous Guaraní speakers, and map-making to develop a compelling argument that the resistance of Indigenous populations in the Atlantic rainforest shaped the expansion (or not) of colonial agendas and also played a major role in the trajectories of global capitalism. It is a pioneering thesis that puts Indigenous peoples at the forefront of global history, and incorporates oral traditions and Indigenous knowledge alongside archival work. The thesis brings together and makes a significant contribution to the best and newest literature in the fields of labour history, environmental history, indigenous history, and global history in a sophisticated analysis that is complemented by an impressive collection of original maps and tables.
Karen Jones (Philosophy) was awarded runner-up for the 2023 Australasian Association of Philosophy Media Prize. The prize is awarded for the best philosophical piece(s) published by a professional philosopher in the popular media in Australasia during the previous calendar years. Karen received the commendation for her discussion on the topic ‘Contempt is Corroding Democracy’, as part of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and the companion piece, ‘Uncivil Wars‘, published in the Quarterly Essay.
Appointments
José Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona has been appointed to a continuing position teaching Heritage Studies at the University of Newcastle (UK). He completed his PhD in Art History at Melbourne under the supervision of Jaynie Anderson and Louise Hitchcock on the topic of Heritage Destruction on the Burrup Peninsula, recently published as Murujuga: Rock Art, Heritage and Landscape Iconoclasm (University of Pennsylvania Press).
Madaline Harris-Schober has been awarded the Palestine Exploration Fund-Albright Institute Fellowship by the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (AIAR) in Jerusalem. The AIAR announcement notes:
The time spent at the Albright and the Palestine Exploration Fund will focus on the Philistine sites of Ashdod and Tel Miqne-Ekron, with the goal of creating a comprehensive and accessible piece of published academic work which clearly and concisely details the early Iron Age ritual and cultic related architecture and finds of these Philistine sites. The site of Tell Miqne-Ekron, which is currently still undergoing sections of publication as part of an Albright series, requires a data audit, specifically for the area of Field X (Field 10). Dr Harris-Schober’s work will provide a comprehensive re-evaluation of these two important sites and specific fields/areas for the sake of future research and archival integrity.
Jonathan Tehusijarana (PhD candidate, History) has been appointed to a fixed-term position at Monash University as Subject Coordinator/Lecturer. Jonathan will be teaching on the global rise of populism.
Research Higher Degree Completions
Andrew Bushnell, ‘Order and the Reason to Be Conservative’ (PhD in Philosophy)
In this thesis, the author makes a case for the reasonableness of conservatism and its application to the political philosophical project of identifying the kinds of institutions that beings like us should have. The recent political philosophical literature on conservatism, largely under the influence of Michael Oakeshott, has focused on potential justifications for status quo bias, holding that conservatism is a commitment to conserving the value that individuals find in existing institutions and practices. But, Bushnell claims, because individuals and their practices may conflict, they are apt to value institutions differently, and so status quo bias cannot amount to a universalisable reason to be conservative. Having established this, he goes on to argue that, inspired by a careful reading of Edmund Burke, conservatism is better understood as a commitment to realising a distinctively conservative value, order, and that this has various implications for political philosophy.
On this view, institutions (in the broadest sense, from our systems of law and politics to our customs and concepts) capture the historical experience of society, the accuracy to reality of which is, Bushnell claims (on a reading of Ludwig Wittgenstein) apprehensible by common sense, at least under certain conditions of order. Thus, order is conservative (of historical experience), and conservatism is a commitment to realising order. Normatively, then, he further claims that conservatism is universally motivated, because order is a basic good for beings like us. Access to historical experience is valuable both intrinsically, because as naturally social beings we rely on institutions to capture and convey accurate information about the world and society in which we live, and instrumentally, in that this information is useful for any projects we might conceive as individuals and collectively. In the final chapter, the author applies this idea of conservatism to various issues in political philosophy. The aim is not to directly rebut objections to conservatism or the desirability of order, but rather to show that distinctively conservative positions on these issues follow from the theory that the author has developed. Identifying conservatism’s substantive commitment to order both clarifies our understanding of conservatism and brings to the surface a value claim that is often overlooked in political philosophy.
Supervisor: Associate Professor Dan Halliday, Andrew Alexandra
Madaline Harris-Schober successfully defended her PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU) and passed summa cum laude. Her thesis was titled ‘Ritual Architecture, Material Culture and Practice of the Philistines’ and was completed at the University of Melbourne and LMU.
Robyn Cooper, ‘Romans, Religion, and Residences. Investigating the Relationship of Domestic Spaces and Roman Homes throughout Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Iberian Peninsula’ (MA in Classics & Archaeology)
Using domestic cult spaces as a source material, this project explores how the nature of space within Roman residences interacted with and influenced on the expression of religious beliefs. As domestic cult spaces acted as ritual centres, they can reveal much about how a household’s beliefs interacted with the wider domestic sphere. Using domestic cult spaces from Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Iberian Peninsula, over 800 cult spaces were compiled into a database and analysed both spatially and statistically. Several methods were employed, such as space syntax, with a focus on location, function, decoration, accessibility, and visibility. This project produced several significant results, with the aim of increasing our understanding of the interaction between religious and domestic space in Roman residences as well as providing new insights into Roman domestic religion as a whole.
Supervisors: Associate Professor Gijs Tol, Dr Tamara Lewit
Research Higher Degree milestones
Jacob Haywood, ‘The Iconography of Cretan Larnakes from the Late Minoan III Period’ (PhD completion seminar, Classics & Archaeology)This presentation examined the iconography of clay burial containers known as ‘larnakes’, widely used on Crete during the Late Minoan III period (ca. 1450—1100 BCE). Unlike earlier Aegean burial containers, LM III larnakes were regularly adorned with painted compositions that included an extensive array of figurative (human & animal), floral, marine, cultic, and abstract motifs. Scholarly interest in larnax iconography has largely focused on efforts to reconstruct Minoan eschatological belief, yet other potential aspects of its functional and ideological significance have received comparatively less attention. Jacob Haywood argues that the sudden appearance of larnax iconography should be understood as a reflection of broader processes of socio-cultural and political change taking place during the final phases of Crete’s Bronze Age, whereby the breakdown of the island’s old palatial hierarchies propelled local communities to formulate new strategies for communicating and negotiating social identities. As larnax iconography drew heavily upon pre-existing motifs and themes from Aegean art, the presentation will also attempt to highlight how familiar imagery—often replicated in other contemporary iconographic settings—was selectively adapted by Cretan communities to serve new symbolic functions in the mortuary sphere.
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