SHAPS Digest (April 2024)

Ronak Alburz (PhD candidate, Classics & Archaeology) and Gijs Tol (Classics & Archaeology) produced a ground-breaking new analysis of the Etruscan bronze lamp of Cortona. They have shown that the lamp is significantly older than previously believed and have offered a new reading of its purpose and significance, suggesting that the lamp may have been associated with the cult of Dionysus. This story was featured on the Phys Org website, as well as the Faculty of Arts News. Further details and a link to their scholarly journal article on the lamp can be found below.

Rose Gertsakis (Masters student, Cultural Materials Conservation) and Justin Zobel co-authored a blog post about the history of doctoral research in Australia. They challenge the common misperception that Australia was decades behind the UK in the development and recognition of research.

Ashleigh Green (Teaching Associate, Classics & Archaeology) was interviewed by ABC Radio National about entertainment shows centred on the practice of ‘unwrapping’ Egyptian mummies in late nineteenth-century Melbourne. This is part of her regular monthly segment on the history of Melbourne on ‘Victorian Afternoons’ with Trevor Chappell.

Madaline Harris-Schober (PhD in Classics and Archaeology, 2023) launched a website featuring her art inspired by archaeological excavations and journeys.

The HPS Podcast published new episodes:

The HPS Podcast is presented by Samara Greenwood (PhD candidate, HPS) and produced by Carmelina Contarino (Honours student, HPS).

The inaugural issue of Kylix, a Classics and Archaeology undergraduate student journal was launched in April. Kylix offers a place for undergraduate students of Classics, Archaeology, and Ancient History to present their work and gain publication experience as they prepare themselves for further academic endeavours. The submitted essays have been edited by third- and fourth-year students, led by an editorial team composed of postgraduates.

The editorial team comprised: Thomas J Keep, Ella Viggiani, Meg Challis, Shivana Dayawala, Edyrn Mudie, Lachlan Mutimer, and Jack Norris. Design Team: Grace Reeve and Anastasia Vassiliadis. Secretary: Laura Pisanu. Web Design: Tayla Newland. The Kylix team thanks Lieve Donnellan (Classics & Archaeology) for her support on this project.

The first issue features articles by Sam Cowen, Isabella Greene, Jeremy Ho, Erica Hore, Emily Horne, Chloe Majstorovic, Charli Philips, Katrina Roziel, Oliver Russel, Sarah Scholz, Anthony Storey, and Yongqi Wang.

Andonis Piperoglou (Hellenic Senior Lecturer in Global Diasporas, History) featured in conversation with Winnie Dunn (General Manager, Sweatshop Literacy Movement Inc.), to launch her debut work of fiction, Dirt Poor Islanders, for the Australian Centre’s 2024 Critical Public Conversations series.

Academic Publications

Ronak Alburz (PhD candidate, Classics & Archaeology) and Gijs Tol (Classics & Archaeology) ‘A Re-Evaluation of the Iconography of the Etruscan Bronze Lamp of Cortona’, Etruscan and Italic Studies

This paper addresses unresolved issues in the study of the enigmatic iconography of the Etruscan bronze lamp of Cortona. Drawing upon literary sources and additional iconographic evidence, issues with previous interpretations of the lamp will be discussed. Subsequently, new identities are proposed for the key figures on the lamp, concluding that its iconography is a manifestation of Dionysian thiasus and that the lamp was a cult object associated with the mystery cult of Dionysus. This paper will also contribute to the refutation of the concept of ‘Dionysism without Dionysus’ in Archaic Etruria.

Oleg Beyda (Hansen Lecturer in History) and Pavel Gavrilov (eds), Beyond the Siege of Leningrad: One Woman’s Life During and After the Occupation. The Recollections of Evdokiia Vasil’evna Baskakova-Bogacheva (Central European University Press)

This memoir about the experiences of German occupation during the siege of Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) was written by Moscow-born Evdokiia Vasilievna Baskakova-Bogacheva (1888–1976), an émigrée in Australia, at the age of 81. The text had been forgotten in the Museum of Russian Culture in San Francisco since 1970 until the editors of this volume discovered it.

After recounting her youth spent against the background of the First World War and the two Russian revolutions of 1917, Evdokiia describes the inferno of the Nazi occupation as experienced in the municipal town of Pushkin, near Leningrad, in 1941–1943. She survived for nearly two years almost on the front line, within a few kilometres of the blockade ring.

As a medical practitioner, she became useful for the occupational authorities and the ever-shrinking town population, until her family was evacuated to the west in October 1943. Besides hunger, discord, disease, the hunt for food and firewood, along with violence and death, Evdokiia’s account deals with various forms of cooperation between Soviet citizens and the new authorities.

The introduction and the detailed notes to the text help the reader to locate Evdokiia’s recollections in time and place, and situate them in their historical context.

Purushottama Bilimoria (Philosophy), with Amy Rayner (eds), The Routledge Companion to Indian Ethics: Women, Justice, Bioethics and Ecology

This volume focuses on the application and practical ramifications of Indian ethics. Here Indian dharma ethics is moved from its preeminent religious origins and classical metaethical proclivity to, what Kant would call, practical reason – or in Aristotle’s poignant terms, ēhikos and phronēis – and, in more modern parlance, normative ethics. The study examines a wide range of social and normative challenges facing people in such diverse areas as women’s rights, infant ethics, politics, law, justice, bioethics and ecology. As a contemporary volume, it builds linkages between existing theories and emerging moral issues, problems and questions in today’s India in the global arena. The volume brings together contributions from some 40 philosophers and contemporary thinkers on practical ethics, exploring both the scope and boundaries or limits of ethics as applied to everyday and real-life concerns and socio-economic challenges facing India in the context of a troubled globalising world. As such, this collection draws on multiple forms of writing and research, including narrative ethics, interviews, critical case studies and textual analyses.

Purushottama Bilimoria also co-authored an obituary for philosopher J N (Jitendra Nath) Mohanty with David Woodruff (UC Irvine) in the latest issue of Sophia (March 2024).

Andrew J May (History), ‘City Views: Modelling Melbourne at the Royal Exhibition Building’, Provenance

This article examines the history of the construction of a scale model of Melbourne in 1838 that was made in 1888 for the Centennial International Exhibition, (Royal) Exhibition Building, Melbourne, and its reinterpretation in Clarence Woodhouse’s lithograph Melbourne in 1888, from the Yarra Yarra, often erroneously cited as having been created in 1838. Reception of the model reveals that it held, at times, contradictory meanings for a variety of audiences and was a touchstone for nostalgic reflections about Melbourne’s past, the progressive achievements observable in its present and uncertainties about urban development in its future. With the opening to the public of the Royal Exhibition Building’s dome promenade in 2022, Melburnians can again reflect on a novel city view, note the pace of urban change, and debate the balance between future development and maintaining, through view protection, the Outstanding Universal Value of the World Heritage listed building.

Carolyn Rasmussen (Honorary, History), ‘The Therapeutic Function of the Commissioned Historian’, Circa: The Journal of Professional Historians Australia

This essay is an exploration, based especially on the histories of Footscray Institute of Technology, the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works and the Melbourne Museum, of the unique and valuable role a commissioned historian can play in assisting a public institution deal with distressing change and disruption in both their past and present.

Natasha Wilson (History), ‘”A New Prague Spring, but from Below?” Socialist Dissent in the Last Soviet Generation and the Emergence of Solidarność in Poland, 1980–1981′, Contemporary European History

This article examines the Young Socialists, a left-wing dissident circle of intellectuals from the last Soviet generation, and focuses on their contacts with Solidarność during 1980–1981. These dissidents, located in Moscow and Minsk, interpreted the Polish strikes as the possible beginnings of a wider move to socialist reform in the Eastern Bloc. Using oral history and samizdat materials from the Russian and Polish archives and the former archives of Radio Free Europe, the article demonstrates how the Young Socialists’ interactions with Poland developed in the wider context of the transnational history of dissent in the Eastern Bloc at the turn of the 1980s. It argues that a combination of internationalist values and bloc-wide dissident solidarities caused socialist dissidents to view nationalist movements on the Soviet periphery and Eastern Europe as potential drivers of socialist reform on the eve of Perestroika.

Sadra Zekrgoo (former Mary Lugton Postdoctoral Fellow, Grimwade Centre), Tradition and Science of Persian Ink Making: Ingredients and Recipes 

Drawing on over a decade of meticulous research, this comprehensive book unveils the intricacies of traditional Persian ink making by examining the treatises of Persian master calligraphers. Explore the historical tapestry of calligraphy, get insight into the lives of Persian master calligraphers, and discover the alchemy behind ink construction. The book presents authentic recipes in their original Persian form as well as English, thoughtfully translated by the author for a wider audience.

Designed for curators, conservators, librarians, art historians, codicologists, scientists, calligraphers, and Persian, Middle Eastern, and Islamic manuscript studies professionals, and enthusiasts. This book is a tribute to the enduring artistry that has adorned manuscripts for centuries, inviting readers to unlock the secrets and heritage of Persian ink making.

Awards

Pete Millwood’s (History) book Improbable Diplomats: How Ping-Pong Players, Musicians, and Scientists Remade US–China Relations (Cambridge University Press) was named a finalist for the 2024 Center for Presidential History Book Prize, Southern Methodist University, ‘awarded annually for a distinguished first book published in English, in any aspect in the field of United States presidential history, broadly defined’.

PhD completions

Henry Dobson (PhD in Philosophy), ‘A Common Morality Approach for AI Ethics’

Following the tradition of bioethics, principlism, as developed by Beauchamp and Childress, has become the prevailing approach in the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (AI ethics). This thesis looks at why this has happened and considers recent literature and other writings which have used principlism as the basis for AI ethics. The thesis looks at a range of problems with principlism and argues that the theory of ‘common morality’ can provide a more philosophically robust and systematic approach for AI ethics.
Supervisors: Dr Andrew Alexandra and Dr Dana Goswick

Ali Shammary (PhD in Philosophy), ‘Absolute Poverty and Human Rights: An Examination of Factual and Normative Issues surrounding Absolute World Poverty’

My Doctoral dissertation focuses on factual and normative questions surrounding the problem of severe global poverty. I argue that benefiting from our governments’ policies, which can result in the deterioration of foreigners’ material conditions, may earn us blame for contributing to worsening their plight. I categorise the causes of poverty at the national, international and global levels, and argue that a comprehensive account of poverty needs to (1) make reference to all the aforementioned kinds of causes and (2) assign appropriate weight to each kind of cause.

Global poverty, as the name indicates, is an issue that should concern us all – it happens in our world under the watchful eyes of us and our representatives and, in many instances, as a result of our actions. We can no longer be content that what happens on the other side of the world is simply a matter of misfortune for some wretched people. Historical causes of today’s unjust arrangements, the widely disparate bargaining power between countries as a result of historical injustices and accidents, and the many other arbitrary factors that continue to influence people’s life prospects all over the world, should at least make us reflect on our role as participants in the global institutional order. Perhaps it is no longer right to ask, what can I do to help? Perhaps we should start asking,  what can I do to make up for my part in harming the poor?

Supervisors: Dr Andrew Alexandra, Associate Professor Holly Lawford Smith

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