SHAPS Digest (December 2022)

Mark Edele (Hansen Chair in History) discussed the historical background to Russia’s war against Ukraine on RN Breakfast.

Emma Gilligan (PhD in History at the University of Melbourne, now Associate Professor for International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington) is working for the US State Department’s War Crimes Team engaged in supporting efforts to put in place mechanisms designed to ensure accountability for war crimes in Ukraine.

Louise Hitchcock (Classics & Archaeology) delivered a National Endowment for the Humanities public lecture at the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, on the topic: ‘Missing or Mis-Perceived? Locating the Purloined Ruler in Neopalatial Crete’.

Louise Hitchcock (Classics & Archaeology) was featured on the History of Cyprus podcast, where she discussed Cyprus’s role in the Bronze Age. Rather than being a passive island, swept up in a sea of empires, Cyprus (Alashiya) was an integral piece in a well-oiled Bronze Age machine. With its vast reserves of copper, Cyprus more than held its own in this period, as the Amarna Letters can attest. In fact, its unique decentralised political system had allowed it to weather the infamous Bronze Age collapse. Its systems survived, and in some cases thrived, while other Bronze Age empires crumbled. And while literacy was snuffed out in Mycenaean Greece, Cyprus’ own writing systems persisted.

Libby Melzer (Grimwade Conservation Services) was interviewed for an article on ABC Radio Melbourne’s Everyday site about saving flood-damaged photos and other precious objects.

Howard Sankey (Philosophy) published a tribute to the New Zealand philosopher Robert Nola (1940–22).

Robyn Sloggett (Cultural Materials Conservation) was interviewed on ABC RN’s The Art Show about museums and climate change.

Tony Ward‘s (Fellow, History) work on social trust was discussed in the Age.

Graham Willett (Fellow, History) spoke about his work on the Australian Queer Archives report on the History of LGBTQI+ Victoria in 100 Places and Objects across the state of Victoria from the 1830s onwards, for a History Month Event hosted by the PMI Victorian History Library.

Academic Publications

Kristian Camilleri (HPS), ‘Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in the Post-War Era‘, in Olival Freite (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations (Oxford University Press)

This chapter focuses on the responses of physicists such as Heisenberg, Pauli, von Neumann, Born, Dirac and Jordan, to the new wave of criticisms of quantum mechanics that emerged after the Second World War. The various attempts to defend the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ took the form of a series of retrospective reconstructions that often went beyond anything we can find in the writings of the late 1920s or ’30s. Various interpretational commitments were appropriated, reinterpreted, and, in some cases, even revised. The postwar orthodoxy was a dialectical response to the new challenges it faced in the early 1950s. Yet this dialectic did not lead to a uniform ‘orthodox’ position. It was therefore never an orthodoxy in the true sense of the word. Far from creating a unitary Copenhagen interpretation, the postwar debates had the effect of dramatically expanding the range of interpretations that bore the label ‘orthodox’ or ‘Copenhagen’.

Alison Clayton (PhD candidate, HPS), ‘Commentary on Levine et al.: A Tale of Two Informed Consent Processes’, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy

This commentary compares two recently published informed consent recommendations for gender dysphoria. One key difference identified is in their assessment of the strength of the evidence base for the gender affirming treatment model. An evaluation of both authors’ citations supports the claims of a weak evidence base for the use of puberty blockers and gender affirming hormonal treatments in youth with gender dysphoria. This commentary then reflects on the implications of this. In particular, it asks whether it would be best practice to provide gender affirming treatments for youth only under clinical research conditions, rather than as routine clinical practice.

Cordelia Fine (HPS), Morgan Weaving (PhD candidate) and Nick Haslam (Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences), ‘Motivated Inquiry: Ideology Shapes Responses to the Christian Porter Rape Allegation’, Australian Journal of Psychology

After learning of the rape allegation against the Attorney-General, Australians were divided in their support for an inquiry. We hypothesised that motivated reasoning on this issue would be associated with ideological preferences. We therefore examined whether perceptions of arguments about the inquiry could be explained by participants’ political orientation, preference for hierarchy (SDO), and motivation to justify the gender status quo (GSJ).

Three months after the allegation was made public, we recruited a gender-balanced sample of 554 Australians to complete an online survey. The findings indicated that participants believed that an article arguing for an inquiry was stronger than an article arguing against an inquiry. However, this effect was weaker among those on the right of the political spectrum and those high on SDO. Political orientation was also associated with differing evaluations of the article’s authors: left-leaning participants found the pro-inquiry author more credible, but right-leaning participants did not. GSJ was not associated with differing evaluations of the articles or their authors.

These findings suggest that ideological preferences are associated with motivated reasoning when evaluating partisan allegations of sexual misconduct. Evaluations of such allegations appear to vary according to people’s political attitudes and preferences for social equality or hierarchy.

Louise A. Hitchcock (Classics & Archaeology), ‘Architectural Biography in Area A at Tell es-Safi/Gath: From Unknown Unknowns to Unknown Knowns and Known Knowns, in Order to Arrive at the Known Unknowns’, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies

This contribution aims to understand the history and function of a rectangular structure, probably domestic in nature and located in the early Philistine sector of Area A at Tell es-Safi/Gath. Tell es-Safi/Gath is one of the five cities of the Philistine Pentapolis, located in modern Israel, mentioned in the Old Testament, and popularly associated with the legendary giant Goliath. The understanding of this building is achieved through presenting a building biography. This includes a discussion of the building’s complicated construction history, construction styles, associated features, and later disturbances. Although there is a substantial amount of research on object biography, most of that work deals with the reuse and modification or design of contemporary buildings, or megalithic monuments of the European prehistoric eras. A building biography situates the Area A structure within its role in preserving early Philistine identity, history, memory, and imbuing the landscape with symbolic meanings.

Jonathan Kemp (Cultural Materials Conservation), ‘Practical Ethics v3.0: Version Control’, in Kunst und Material. Konzepte, Prozesse, Arbeitsteilungen (Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA))

The article makes the argument that all conservation – whether on old or new art/cultural heritage – is akin to version control with each iteration a ‘version of record’, and that conservators are like art-developers. Recent ideas coming from contemporary art conservation – especially performance, installation, media art – have focused on how documentation and archiving are key to preserving the identity and continuity of such artworks. By comparing documentation (in its widest sense) from various iterations of a work conservators make decisions around what changes are permissible for any subsequent iteration.

Various models have been proposed for this decision-making and all are designed to assimilate how such artworks are both necessarily open-ended and changeable. These models all suggest that conservators can both manage change and understand the parameters necessary for maintaining an artwork’s identity through that change. Where many approaches to conservation continue to be founded around notions of identity and, by default, autography, one argument to be made is that the preservation of cultural heritage is ultimately an allographic process and that any iteration of a work effects a particular and time-stamped ‘version of record’.

The logic of this approach is that conservation can be recast as being fundamentally engaged in practices akin to Version Control (VC). Typically, VC systems allow each phase of software development to be made accessible for cross-checking against any other version by all involved. VC thus allows collaborative groups of people to work on a project without losing sight of any changes and, importantly, with the project’s authorship being distributed. As such, each software project can be understood as ontologically open-ended and with either its obsolescence or forking into distinct programs both freighted within its VC management. This article briefly describes Version Control practices used in technology; it uses case studies to draw links and parallels with practices by default enacted by conservators and others involved in the care of cultural heritage; finally, it discusses how recasting conservation’s practices as acts of Version Control can help revitalise the profession by foregrounding its activities in the production of culture.

Caitlin Mahar (PhD in History, 2016; now Swinburne University of Technology.), The Good Death through Time (MUP, February 2023)

Can our forebears help us face complex questions of dying, now?

‘I have quite a bit of understanding of white man’s ways, but it is difficult for me to understand this one.’ An Australian Senate committee investigation of the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995, the first legislation in the world that allowed doctors to actively assist patients to die, found that for the vast majority of Indigenous Territorians, the idea that a physician – or anyone else – should help end a dying, suffering person’s life was so foreign that in some instances it proved almost impossible to translate. The Good Death Through Time asks how such a death became a ‘thinkable’ – even desirable – way to die for so many others in Western cultures.

For centuries a good death – the ‘euthanasia’ – meant a death blessed by God that might well involve pain, for suffering was seen as ultimately redemptive. But in the Victorian age, when doctors started to treat the dying with painkillers as well as prayers, a painful death came to be thought of as an aberrant, dehumanising experience.

As this book explores, the modern idea that a good death should be painless spurred sometimes troubling developments in palliative medicine as well as an increasingly well-organised assisted dying movement. Delving into what euthanasia activists, doctors, lawyers, religious leaders and lay people have thought and felt about dying, The Good Death Through Time shows that understanding the radical historical shift in Western attitudes to managing dying and suffering helps us better grasp the stakes in today’s contestations over what it means to die well.

“Mahar’s unflinching research and writing is exactly what many nonfiction readers crave; in her book we come face-to-face with ourselves as a species.” – Books + Publishing

“In her scrupulously fair and richly informed contribution to ‘the history of dying’, Caitlin Mahar discloses the historically deep and culturally diverse sources of our disagreements about euthanasia. We argue about what to do, about the spirit in which to do it and even about what is at issue. The Good Death Through Time deepens our understanding of these aspects of our current debates and therefore helps us to establish a critical distance from which to think about them.”
— Raimond Gaita

“Beautifully written, this book deftly probes the cultural history of what it means to die well in the west. Its compelling insights into the evolution of euthanasia will see The Good Death Through Time take its place on bookshelves alongside studies of dying from the Victorian era to the present.”
– Helen MacDonald, author, ‘Human Remains and Possessing the Dead’

Kali Myers & James Lesh (PhD in History, 2018; now, Deakin University), ‘The Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the Limits of Values-Based Conservation’, Heritage and Society

Mia Martin Hobbs (PhD in History, 2019; resident researcher, Digital Studio), ‘Veterans’ Reflections on Legacies of War in Việt Nam at Peace’, in Brian Cuddy & Fredrik Logevall, The Vietnam War in the Pacific World

Since 1981, thousands of veterans from Australia and the US have returned to Vietnam: to reconcile with their former enemy, to revisit their own memories, to heal from trauma, to understand why and how they lost. Those who returned faced new stories and memories about the war that often undermined or contradicted the narratives that had shaped their post-war identities. Drawing on oral history interviews conducted with over 50 returnees, this chapter explores veterans’ reflections on the war in light of their returns, focussing on four war legacy issues: perceptions of defeat (or victory) in Vietnam; the anti-war movement; the association between ‘their’ war and war crimes; and the justness of the war. Rather than challenging veterans’ pre-return views, the experience of returning to Vietnam often reinforced their existing values and beliefs around the war, with veterans from both countries and across the political spectrum drawing on Vietnamese narratives and memories to support their views on the war. Veterans’ reflections indicate that debates around these topics are far from settled. On the contrary, the force and passion with which veterans discussed these topics demonstrated how polarising and contentious the Vietnam War continues to be.

Dang Nguyen (PhD in HPS, 2022; now RMIT University) (@digitaldang), ‘Convenient Efficiency: A Media Genealogy of QR Codes’, New Media & Society

This article explains the widespread adoption of Quick Response (QR) codes from a media genealogy perspective. Understanding QR codes as more than the materiality of their machinic embodiments and rather as a method of systematically and repeatedly addressing emergent problems, it argues that the operative logic of QR code is that of convenient efficiency. Convenient efficiency captures three dynamics that drive QR codes’ ubiquity: the potentiality of spontaneous system synergies (system/distributed convenience coupled with streamlined efficiency); the autonomy of the subjects involved as part of this cybernetic system (personal convenience coupled with stacked efficiency); and the relative independence of the networks/assemblages that these practices constitute (convenient efficiency). That the convergence between convenience and efficiency as driving forces in contemporary technological culture has origins in the shop floor is consequential to the way motion, time and the body become disciplined—as well as the epistemological practices that cohere around these forces.

Sonia Randhawa (PhD in History, 2019), Writing Women: The Women’s Pages of the Malay-Language Press (1987–1998) (Palgrave Macmillan)

This book examines how women journalists in Malaysia negotiated male power structures, in particular structures determined by the keystone party of the ruling coalition, the United Malays National Organisation. Through both oral histories and content analysis, it looks at how women journalists in the women’s pages of the newspapers found spaces to advocate for their readers. It is thus the first work to look at the importance of the women’s pages in the Malay-language newspapers, and how apparently monolithic institutions of the authoritarian state hid diverse contests for resources and prestige. In this contest, the concept of news values, the perception of the reader and the ways in which women constructed themselves as journalists all come into play, and are examined here. The book contributes to the field of feminist media studies by examining how gendered newsroom practices paradoxically allowed women journalists in the women’s pages more editorial freedom than those in the malestream press.

Greg Restall and Shawn Standefer, Logical Methods (MIT Press) (pictured against the backdrop of Greg’s new home at the University of St Andrews in Scotland).

An accessible introduction to philosophical logic, suitable for undergraduate courses and above.

Rigorous yet accessible, Logical Methods introduces logical tools used in philosophy—including proofs, models, modal logics, meta-theory, two-dimensional logics, and quantification—for philosophy students at the undergraduate level and above. The approach developed by Greg Restall and Shawn Standefer is distinct from other texts because it presents proof construction on equal footing with model building and emphasises connections to other areas of philosophy as the tools are developed.

Throughout, the material draws on a broad range of examples to show readers how to develop and master tools of proofs and models for propositional, modal, and predicate logic; to construct and analyze arguments and to find their structure; to build counterexamples; to understand the broad sweep of formal logic’s development in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and to grasp key concepts used again and again in philosophy.

This text is essential to philosophy curricula, regardless of specialisation, and will also find wide use in mathematics and computer science programs.

“A superb introduction to philosophical logic written by two leading experts in the field. At once mathematically rigorous and philosophically rewarding, it will be very much appreciated by philosophy students and professional philosophers alike.”—Hannes Leitgeb, Chair of Logic and Philosophy of Language, LMU Munich

Howard Sankey (Philosophy), ‘On Mr Truetemp’s Lack of Virtue‘, Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 

Keith Lehrer’s case of Mr Truetemp, whose reliably formed true beliefs about the temperature are the result of a tempucomp implanted in his head, is designed as a counter-example to process reliabilism. In this short note, the example is explored from the point of view of the two main forms of virtue epistemology. It is suggested that Truetemp’s reliably formed true beliefs about the temperature fail to be virtuously formed in either the sense of the virtue reliabilist or the virtue responsibilist. Hence, virtue epistemology is able to handle the case of Mr Truetemp.

The latest issue of Sophia: International Journal of Philosophy and Traditions was released in December month. Sophia is edited by Purushottama Bilimoria (Principal Fellow, Philosophy).

Sadra Zekgroo (Grimwade), ‘European Ink Recipes Found in ‘Ali Hosseini’s 19th Century Persian Treatise Kasf al Sanaye’ (Discovering Crafts)‘, Restaurator. International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material

There have been many treatises left behind by Persian master calligraphers detailing the different aspects of the art of the book such as book binding, types of paper, calligraphic styles and their importance, reed pens and cutting styles for calligraphy, as well as the construction of dyes, pigments, sizing, and of course, inks. While these treatises almost exclusively focus on traditional Persian crafts, the manuscript researched in this paper is dedicated to the western crafts and recipes which were gathered and translated into Persian by ‘Ali Ḥosseini, a nineteenth-century Iranian scholar. Furthermore, he used the English terms of ingredients and transliterated them in Persian during translation, which can make deciphering the recipes very challenging for the average reader. The current paper focuses on the ink making recipes of the manuscript Kašf al-Ṣanāye‘ translated from European sources.

Appointments & Awards

Julia Bowes has been appointed as the inaugural Lecturer in Gender History.

Martin Bush (Senior Research Fellow, HPS) is the recipient of a 2023 Moran Award for History of Science Research award for his proposal entitled Literary Skies: The Popular Astronomy of William Albert Amiet. These awards are administered by the Australian Academy of Science.

Lachlan Forster (BA, Politics & International Studies, and History) and Asha Hamilton (BA, Anthropology & History student) have been named as 2023 New Colombo Plan Scholars.

Henry Reese (PhD in History, 2019) was highly commended by the selection panel for the inaugural AHA Early Career Researcher Fellowship for 2023.

Sean Scalmer (History) has been awarded a research grant through the Gerda Henkel Foundation’s Democracy Programme for the project Direct Action and Democracy: Utopia, Experience, Threat. This project aims to chronicle the long-term history and transformations of ‘direct action’ and also to track its changing relationship to ‘democracy’ as an idea and a practice. The research will trace changes from the late nineteenth century until the present, and is transnational and comparative in scope. Sean will collaborate on the research with Iain McIntyre , a recent doctoral graduate from the School. 

Evan Tindal has been awarded an Australian Decorative & Fine Arts Societies Mid-Career Scholarship as part of the 2022 Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material Awards. This will enable Evan to undertake built heritage metalwork conservation training at West Dean college. The training will help bridge a gap in built heritage metalwork knowledge where experience with traditional metalworking techniques is required.

Research Higher Degree Milestones

Max Denton, ‘Same-Sex Marriage in Australia and the Transformation of an Institution, c. 1930-2017’ (PhD completion seminar, History)

This thesis explores the history of same-sex marriage in Australia between 1930 and the introduction of marriage equality in 2017. It uses a range of sources to examine the long history of same-sex weddings, commitment ceremonies and relationship recognition reform. It finds a prominent and sustained interest in same-sex marriage in Australia and internationally since the emergence of modern LGBT politics in the 1970s, with roots in earlier camp cultures. This complicated and contested history helps us better understand the recent marriage equality movement and reveals how the institution of marriage itself has transformed over the twentieth century.

Divya Rama Gopalakrishnan, ‘Venereal Diseases and Bodily Excesses: A Social History of Contagion in the Madras Presidency (c1780 to 1900)’ (PhD completion seminar, History) 
This thesis investigates the discourses around lock hospitals and venereal diseases in colonial south India or Madras presidency in the nineteenth century. It highlights the epistemological exchange between Europe and the colonies regarding sexuality and venereal diseases and traces the colony’s contribution to ideas of public health, morality, and sexuality. Using a range of sources the thesis explores new stories of colonial surveillance and efforts to control venereal disease and their impact on women’s lives in nineteenth-century India. It also attempts to trace the agency of women within colonial medical institutions and in that way tries to contribute to the diverse understanding of the medical history of colonialism.

Felicity Hodgson, ‘Encountering Conflict and Ideology: American Women War Correspondents 1930s–1960s’ (PhD confirmation seminar, History)

War, its presentation in the media and the critical role of war correspondents is of perennial importance to society when repeatedly confronted with conflicts that inherently disrupt free media and information flows. Across the breadth of twentieth-century conflicts American correspondents faced repeated challenges from working with censorship and military requirements. While there is growing attention to women war correspondents many works continue with gender-based approaches. Through an expanded methodology, this thesis will draw attention to both diversity of experience and interpretation while simultaneously exposing common themes within a select group of American women war correspondents.

Eli Farrow, ‘The Galli: A Case Study in Ancient Transgender Identity’ (MA confirmation seminar, Ancient World Studies)

The galli were religious functionaries attached to the cult of the Magna Mater in Rome and its provinces who are notable for their practice of self-castration and feminine gender presentation, including the adoption of feminine dress, hair styling, cosmetics, and vocal registers. This presentation will explore what is known about the origins, extent, and methods of the practice of castration within the cult and how, due to this behaviour, the galli can serve as a useful case study for expanding on a growing interest within classics in the field of transgender studies and of the possibilities, implications, and limitations of theorising transgender experience in the ancient world.

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Feature image: Dr Martin Bush, winner of the 2023 Moran Award for the History of Science Research.