SHAPS Digest (June 2024)

Melissa Afentoulis (PhD in History, 2019) was interviewed for the Alumni & Giving website about her research and how it has inspired her work on the Alumni Council.

James Bradley (HPS) was interviewed by ABC RN All in the Mind on music and whether it can inspire mania. 

The work of James Keating (History) was featured in a Crikey article about the imperative to reckon with early feminists’ racism as we memorialise them in public. James is the author of the award-winning book, Distant Sisters: Australasian Women and the International Struggle for the Vote (Manchester University Press, 2020).

Nicole Davis (History/Forum) was interviewed by Suffolk News about the link between Bury St Edmunds in England and Oakleigh in Melbourne through Bury-born 1850s merchant, land agent, and settler colonist Henry de Carle.

Andonis Piperoglou (Hellenic Senior Lecturer in Global Diasporas) reviewed Hellenic Dreaming: Greek-Australian Stories, edited by Helen Vatsikopoulos, for Neos Cosmos.

The project Museum and Collections for All: Collection Care and Conservation in Indonesia, a collaboration between the Indonesian Heritage Agency–Museum dan Cagar Budaya and the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conversation was featured on the Arts Faculty’s International Engagement page. The project is led by Nicole Tse (Cultural Materials Conservation, SHAPS) and Wulan Diragantoro (School of Culture and Communication). It aims to advance collection care and heritage conservation methods in Indonesia inforrmed by local environmental and community issues, focusing on paintings collections and artworks from Indonesia.

Appointments & Awards

Simon Farley (PhD in History, 2024) has been appointed to the History Australia team as incoming History Off the Page editor. Simon has been one of the Australian Historical Association (AHA) Postgraduate Representatives since June 2022.

Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan (PhD in History, 2023) was shortlisted for the AHA General History Thesis Prize for her thesis, ‘Venereal Diseases and Bodily Excesses: A Social History of Contagions in the Madras Presidency (c. 1780 to 1900)’.

Jesse Seeberg-Gordon (PhD student in History) has received a 2024 National Archives of Australia/Australian Historical Association Postgraduate Scholarship for the project On the Diplomatic Sidelines: A Study of Australian-Soviet Relations. This scholarship scheme is aimed at extending the public understanding of Australia’s history and supporting the digitisation of the relevant records to benefit future researchers.

Nicole Tse (Cultural Materials Conservation) won the Faculty of Arts 2023 Dean’s Award for Most Significant Contribution to Internationalisation. The award recognised her work in creating pathways to formal qualifications for conservators across the Asia-Pacific region, empowering conservation professionals to more effectively advocate for art and heritage items, collections and culture, including through the subjects Conservation Industry Internship (CUMC 90006) and, in association with the National Museum of the Philippines, Content in the Field (CUMC 90023).

Academic Publications

KO Chong-Gossard (Classics & Archaeology), Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound and Plato’s Apology: Greek Pairs for VCE Classical Studies. Iris: Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria

This article provides teachers of VCE Classical Studies with an accessible but erudite analysis of two ancient Greek works in translation (Prometheus Bound and Plato’s Apology) which are ‘paired’ as prescribed texts for the VCE Classical Studies exam. The analysis compares these texts with respect to the criteria of the VCE Study Guide: key ideas and themes, techniques, sociohistorical contexts, and what a comparison of ideas and techniques reveals about the Greek works. Detailed suggestions are given for what might (or indeed what should not) count as a ‘technique’ in a translated work. The key ideas are how Prometheus and Socrates are dramatised as criminals, benefactors, martyrs, and as representatives of opposing modes of communication (resistance vs. dialogue).

KO Chong-Gossard, Trevet’s Medea: A Reading of Seneca’s Medea through Nicholas Trevet’s Medieval Commentary, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 

In 1314, the Oxford Dominican monk Nicholas Trevet was commissioned to write a commentary on Seneca’s tragedies. Trevet’s interpretation of character and plot in Seneca’s Medea differs in many ways from twenty-first-century classical scholars. Because Trevet relied on a single manuscript from the so-called ‘A tradition’ of Seneca’s plays, he and his readers did not have access to a Senecan Medea who asks Jason whether he ‘recognises his wife’ before departing Corinth in a flying chariot drawn by serpents, because the final nineteen lines of the play did not exist in A. Trevet did not know a Medea who told her Nurse that she ‘would become’ Medea. It is Trevet’s Medea, and not Jason, who is being pursued by Pelias’s son Acastus. For Trevet, Jason’s alliance with Creon’s daughter Creusa is calculated not to protect himself and his sons from an angry and dangerous Acastus, but in order to save Medea’s life. Furthermore, the theme of Medea as Jason’s saviour, and this act of salvation itself as the cause of crime, informs Trevet’s reading (and misreading) of important passages. Finally, when Medea argues back and forth with herself, Trevet attributes Medea’s regard for her sons as ‘not mine’ to her loss of power over them because of her exile from Corinth, without any mention that the sons might now belong to Jason’s new wife Creusa. These are all subtle interpretations that cumulatively form a unique ‘reading’ of Seneca’s Medea offered by the very first commentator on all of Seneca’s plays, 700 years ago.

KO Chong-Gossard, Some Classroom Practices in Teaching Ancient Greek and Latin in Universities, Classicum: A Joint Journal of the Classical Association of New South Wales and of the Classical Languages Teachers Association

This article outlines observations of the teaching of Classical Greek and Latin languages at some English-speaking colleges and universities in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. It analyses best practices in how to conduct group work on unseen passages where vocabulary, morphology, published translations and metre reinforce each other in understanding the syntax of the Greek/Latin text. It also discusses assessment tasks other than translation, such as commentary on syntax or on published translations of a previously seen Greek/Latin text, which became extremely useful in online learning during COVID lockdowns

Peter McPhee (Honorary, History) and Philip Dwyer (University of Newcastle, NSW) published the second edition of The French Revolution and Napoleon: A Sourcebook.

This volume collects together a wide selection of primary texts that explain the processes behind the enormous changes undergone by France and Europe between 1787 and 1815, from the origins of the Revolution to the counterrevolution and from Marie-Antoinette to Bonaparte.

The achievements, terror and drama of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic period restructured politics and society on a grand scale, making this the defining moment for modern European history. While bringing the impact of historical events to life, Philip Dwyer and Peter McPhee provide a clear outline of the period through the selection of key documents, lucid introductory passages and commentary. They illustrate the meaning of the Revolution for peasants, sans-culottes, women and slaves, as well as placing events within a wider European and global context.

Students will find this an invaluable source of information on the Revolution and its international significance.

Evan Smith, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa and Jimmy Wintermute (PhD in History, 2022), Transnational Activism, Solidarity and Ireland: An Introduction, Irish Studies Review

At the time of writing, Ireland’s much publicised support for global movements against racism, apartheid and genocide continues to draw both international praise and condemnation. Its overwhelming support for the people of Palestine in the face of current Israeli military offensives, for example, is lauded by like-minded activists, while being derided by those in defence of the actions of the Israeli state. A few years earlier, Ireland was at the centre of a transnational network expressing solidarity with Irish women’s demands for reproductive rights. While feminists globally were mobilised in support of the 2018 Repeal the 8th campaign, it was Irish activists’ effective harnessing of social media platforms to call the diaspora ‘home’ to vote in the ultimately successful referendum for abortion rights that lent the movement its reputation for internationalism.

These contemporary experiences of transnational activism build on an array of historical precedents. Ireland has historically constituted both a site of ‘activism’ and a node within broader transnational histories of protest and contention. It has also occupied a privileged location in the political and utopian imaginary of transnational social movements on both the political left and right, from anti-colonial movements to white settler nationalisms. Most prominently, solidarity with Irish republicanism in its various forms has been expressed by movements across the globe since the late nineteenth century. At the same time, and as referenced above, activists in Ireland have also expressed solidarity with causes and movements elsewhere in the world. In this special issue of Irish Studies Review on ‘Transnational Activism, Solidarity and Ireland’, we survey some of Ireland’s historical global political entanglements.

Elizabeth Tunstall (PhD in History, 2022), The Succession Debate and Contested Authority in Elizabethan England, 1558–1603 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

This book examines the succession debate in England during the reign of Elizabeth I. It considers the succession question in its entirety, instead of dividing the topic into early or late periods as has been typically the case. Commencing with a consideration of the succession tracts and the laws which governed the succession, this book seeks to examine the matter in terms of its original sixteenth-century context and how the participants of the debate understood the issue. With the succession issue outlined, the main parties of the debate – those being the Queen, her Privy Council and Parliament – are considered in turn, exploring the effect of the succession debate upon English considerations of government and royal prerogative.

PhD Completion

Bronwyn Beech Jones (PhD in History, 2024), Textual Worlds: Rethinking Self, Community, and Activism in Colonial-Era Sumatran Women’s Newspaper Archives

This thesis examines how women and girls from the island of Sumatra articulated their experiences and conceived of their selves, communities, and aspirations in three Malay language women’s periodicals published between 1912 and 1929. By privileging self-expression and paying attention to individual voices, my analysis provides new insights into the diverse selves and worlds of girls and women in colonial-era Indonesia. This is the first sustained analysis of these publications as archives of perspectives and lives, with a focus on authors and activism in West Sumatra, North Sumatra, and Bengkulu, as well as Jambi and Aceh. Soenting Melajoe (1912–21), published in Padang, West Sumatra, together with the Medan-based periodical Perempoean Bergerak (1919–20), and federation of women’s organisations periodical Asjraq (1925–28) published in Padang, document the development of women’s political and social reform agendas and networks. This dissertation contends that these newspapers function as rich archives produced from the perspectives of Sumatran women. They contain traces, which I call shards, of women and girls’ senses of self, community, and world.

The dissertation argues that through letters, writers voiced and produced coalitional, proto-nationalist, and nationalist agendas which, while diverse, commonly demanded education and respect, and drew on multiple sources of knowledge, including Islamic faith, customs, and colonial schooling. I contend that close reading of women and girls’ contributions reveals how they formed multiple intra-national communities based on gender, location, ethnic and racial group, and common belonging to the archipelago of the Indies through letters, common languages, and advocating certain forms of knowledge. I argue that the production of craft, particularly weaving and lacemaking, underpinned a maternalist form of gender-based solidarity in the early-1910s that co-existed with and shifted into charged calls for rights, and lay the rhetorical ground for more organised forms of activism during the 1920s.

Supervisors: Professor Kate McGregor, Professor Zoë Laidlaw

Research Higher Degree Milestones

Dan Crowley (MA candidate, Classics & Archaeology) Herodotus’ Mirror: Unpacking the Purpose of the Plupast (MA completion seminar)

The ‘plupast’ is a narrative technique specific to historical writing. It occurs when characters within a history text make their own historical references – history inside of history. The plupast is often thought to have a ‘meta’ significance, because the historian is holding up a mirror to their own practice. Accordingly, the way characters engage with history reflect the historian’s own views about the nature and purpose of their discipline. My research considers the 12 plupast episodes in Herodotus’ Histories. Previous scholarship has concluded that Herodotus uses the plupast to illustrate the wrong way to do history – his characters are foils, whose biased, one-sided accounts accentuate Herodotus’ more objective method. I argue against this conclusion. In some plupast episodes, Herodotus’ characters engage with the past in very Herodotean ways. In other episodes, there seems to be no clear ‘meta’ point at all – rather, the plupast adds dramatic depth and tension at points where the narrative demands it. 

Dan Crowley is completing a Masters of Classics at the University of Melbourne, having finished a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in 2022.

Leo Palmer (MA candidate, Classics & Archaeology) Athenian Democracy in Context (MA completion seminar)

The birth of democracy in Greece, and indeed the world, is often dated to the reforms of Cleisthenes the Athenian in the late sixth century, or at the very latest, to the reforms of Pericles and Ephialtes in mid-fifth-century Athens. However, such claims rely on anachronistic notions of ‘democracy’ which fail to account for the vast differences between ancient Athenian society and our modern conceptions of consensual government and political rights. I argue that classical Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries, right through the so-called ‘golden age’ of Pericles’ leadership, had yet to become a fully-fledged demokratia. Instead, like its Peloponnesian rival Sparta, Athens’ political system at this time more closely resembled a complex mixture of monarchy, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy, with elite aristocratic factions led by Pericles firmly at the helm. An analysis of contemporary definitions of demokratia and related terms reveals that democracy was a highly elastic concept, often more closely intertwined with religion, mythology, and tradition, than with political ideals in the modern sense. Institutions of Athenian government are accordingly shown to be highly prone to elite manipulation, with many key democratic reforms affecting the council, assembly, and the law courts not taking place until the fourth century. These findings should prompt us to reconsider the extent to which democracy was a unique and revolutionary development of classical Athens, and instead point to a gradual evolution influenced by broader regional shifts from monarchy to elite-led regimes.

Leo Palmer is undertaking a Master of Arts in Classics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests are in ancient Greek literature, politics, and religion.

Other Happenings

SHAPS Classics & Archaeology staff are delivering a range of talks in connection to the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark exhibition, Pharaoh, which celebrates 3,000 years of ancient Egyptian art and culture:

Statue of future Pharaoh Horemheb and his wife Egypt, Saqqara, tomb of Horemheb 18th Dynasty, reigns of Tutankhamun or Ay, c1336–1323 BCE. British Museum, London, EA36. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum

Feature image: Classics & Archaeology Honours students join this year’s dig currently underway in Rabati, Georgia, 2024. (L to R) back row: Elizabeth Tetaz, Miette Welsh, Kate Oski; front row Hannah Lewis, Peggy Lucas. A report on this year’s work will appear in the near future but you can read about last year’s in this recent post on Forum