SHAPS Digest (October 2022)
K.O. Chong-Gossard (Classics & Archaeology) delivered a lecture in the Humanities 21 Corporate Conversations Series, on the topic, ‘Career Women in Ancient Greece’.
Many people might assume that ancient history is the history of men. But in fact, Greek and Roman antiquity is full of inspiring women who became masters of their craft, whether it was the arts and humanities, medicine, or business. Sappho, Erinna, Nossis and Anyte were Greek poets who achieved fame in their day and inspired generations of future writers. Theano, Perictione, Melissa, Ptolemais, and others were Pythagorean philosophers who dispensed philosophical advice to other women. Hagnodike won fame as a doctor in classical Athens, but had to disguise herself as a man to do it. But centuries later in the city of Tlos, there was no need for disguise; the Greek-speaking citizens there awarded special honours to Antiochis for her work as a doctor, and she set up a statue of herself with her own funds. In Rome, Coelia Mascellina and her mother were importers and wholesalers of Spanish wine and olive oil, and many other women are known to have owned and managed workshops for lead pipes and bricks. Although so much of what these women did survives now in fragments, enough remains for us to marvel and be inspired by their achievements.
The Grimwade Conservation Services team have been actively responding to the community losses associated with the floods in recent weeks, including by offering online workshops to help people salvage precious items damaged in the floods. Paper conservator Libby Melzer appeared on ABC News Breakfast to discuss this work, which was also featured on the University’s Newsroom site.
Karen Jones (Philosophy) was a speaker in the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, taking part in a panel discussion with Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly, addressing the topic: Is contempt corroding democracy? The discussion was recorded before an audience and broadcast on ABC Radio National, The Minefield.
Timothy Khoo (Master of International Relations student) published an article on Russian-German energy politics in the student-run journal Melbourne International Relations Review. The article is based on the essay that Timothy produced for the subject HIST90037 Russia and the World.
Catherine Kovesi (History) delivered the History Council of Victoria’s 2022 Annual Lecture, titled ‘Beauty in Response to Plague: The City of Venice’.
In October 1347 there was an outbreak of a highly contagious disease in the south of Italy that originated in the East and soon spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe. In its first 18 months, the so-called Black Death killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone and resurfaced repeatedly for the next three centuries until its last outbreak in Marseilles in 1720. It was port cities above all that faced the greatest ongoing threat from plague and which were by default at the frontline of pandemic control, all instituting a range of measures both during and after successive outbreaks.
One port city, that of Venice, was remarkable not only for the innovative role it played in instituting a comprehensive plague defensive strategy, but for the staggering beauty of its responses to the possible threat, present danger, and aftermath of each outbreak of plague. The entire city and the wider lagoon area is marked by these responses – in art, architecture, and ritual commemorations – which have left an indelible imprint upon the city scape which is so familiar to the world’s imaginings of Venice. This lecture outlines Venice’s comprehensive systems for pandemic control before concentrating on the breathtaking model it provides for a response of beauty even in the face of unbearable trauma and death.
Marilyn Lake (Professorial Fellow, History) commented for the Australian Academy of the Humanities on the gender pay gap, the burden of care work placed on women and the vision of historical feminists for a more equal Australia.
The Object-Based Learning Lab in Arts West and its use in the subject Egypt under the Pharaohs (ANCW 20003) was featured on the University’s social media channels.
Andonis Piperoglou (Hellenic Senior Lecturer in Global Diasporas) published an article via the ANU’s Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry, ‘From Dago to Wog: Remembering Stinging Slurs’. This blog post stems from a chapter, ‘“Dirty Dagoes” Respond: A Transnational History of a Racial Slur’, that was recently published in Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation (edited by Yiorgos Anagnostou, Yiorgos D. Kalogeras and Theodora Patrona), the winner of the 2022 Modern Greek Studies Association Vasiliki Karagiannaki Best Edited Book Prize in Modern Greek Studies (North America).
Academic Publications
Oleg Beyda (Hansen Lecturer in Russian History) and Xosé M Núñez Seixas (eds), An Anti-Communist on the Eastern Front: The Memoirs of a Russian Officer in the Spanish Blue Division 1941–1942 (Pen & Sword Books)
Vladimir Kovalevskii’s memoirs record in graphic detail a remarkable military career. As a soldier, a committed anti-communist and Russian patriot he saw from the inside a series of conflicts that ravaged Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. In the First World War he fought the Germans, as a White Russian he opposed the Bolsheviks. He joined the French Foreign Legion and served in Africa before fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War and for Hitler in the Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. His memoirs give a vivid insight into the armies he fought with and the causes he fought for – and they show how eventually the mental toll became so great that he was devoured by his own contradictions and the contradictions of his times. His experiences on the Eastern Front during the Second World War were shocking. He hoped the German campaign in the Soviet Union would liberate the Russian people, but after witnessing the grim suffering inflicted on the civilian population by a brutal occupying army he was deeply disillusioned and tormented by a sense of guilt. In the late 1940s, in order to make sense of his life as a soldier and to document the extraordinary sights he’d seen, he wrote these memoirs in Russian. They were buried in an archive for over seventy years, but they have now been edited, annotated and translated for this first English edition.
Ashleigh Green (PhD in Classics & Archaeology, 2020), Birds in Roman Life and Myth (Routledge)
This book explores the place of birds in Roman myth and everyday life, focusing primarily on the transitional period of 100 BCE to 100 CE within the Italian peninsula.
A diverse range of topics is considered in order to build a broad overview of the subject. Beginning with an appraisal of omens, augury, and auspices – including the ‘sacred chickens’ consulted by generals before battle – it goes on to examine how Romans farmed birds, hunted them, and kept them as pets. It demonstrates how the ownership and consumption of birds were used to communicate status and prestige, and how bird consumption mirrored wider economic and social trends. Each topic adopts an interdisciplinary approach, considering literary evidence alongside art, material culture, zooarchaeology, and modern ornithological knowledge. The inclusion of zooarchaeology adds another dimension to the work and highlights the value of using animals and faunal remains to interpret the past.
Studying the Roman view of birds offers great insight into how they conceived of their relationship with the gods and how they stratified and organised their society. This book is a valuable resource for bird lovers and researchers alike, particularly those studying animals in the ancient world.
Max Kaiser (PhD in History, 2019) (@maxyka), Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism (Palgrave Macmillan)
This book takes a timely look at histories of radical Jewish movements, their modes of Holocaust memorialisation, and their relationships with broader anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles. Its primary focus is Australia, where Jewish antifascism was a major political and cultural force in Jewish communities in the 1940s and early 1950s.
This cultural and intellectual history of Jewish antifascism utilises a transnational lens to provide an exploration of a Jewish antifascist ideology that took hold in the middle of the twentieth century across Jewish communities worldwide. It argues that Jewish antifascism offered an alternate path for Jewish politics that was foreclosed by mutually reinforcing ideologies of settler colonialism, both in Palestine and Australia.
Ann Nguyen Austen (PhD in History, 2019; now ACU), Vietnamese Migrants in Australia and the Global Digital Diaspora: Histories of Childhood, Forced Migration, and Belonging
Through oral histories, memoirs, and Facebook posts of Vietnamese adults who entered Australia as children after the Vietnam War (and Vietnamese refugees, war orphans, and children of refugees) this book provides insight into the memories of forced migrant childhoods and histories, as well as the complexities of national and transnational identity and belonging in digital diaspora.
As war and displacement compounds the need for creating communities and histories for cultural continuity, this book is a history about childhood and migration for the Vietnamese diaspora of refugees, adoptees, and second generation in Australia and their connectedness to a global and digital diaspora.
Using Facebook as a digital archive for historical research, Vietnamese Migrants in Australia and the Global Digital Diaspora presents new methods for the study of what Nguyen Austen proposes as a new area of digital diaspora studies for interdisciplinary research about real and digital life in the humanities and social sciences. As a contemporary digital diaspora study of Vietnamese forced child migrants from 1975 to the present, this book contains a mixed-methods historical analysis of the impact of war and displacement on memories of childhood.
This book presents an innovative history of the national, transnational, digital, and contemporaneous lives of Vietnamese child migrants, which will make a significant contribution to the discourse on transnational childhood, migration, and belonging for refugees and migrants in the twenty-first century.
Gretel Evans (PhD in History, 2020; now Monash), ‘Remembering Two Cities: Generational Memories of the Greta Army and Migrant Camp, 1939–2020′ in Oral History Australia
The Greta Army and Migrant Camp in regional New South Wales has been the focus of many reunions, anniversaries and commemorative events even though there are few tangible remains or markers of its two histories. Migrant former residents remember their time at Greta camp differently depending on their age, prior experiences, and length of stay. These generational differences and family histories have influenced the types of memories and narratives shared at subsequent anniversaries and reunions. While the now privately owned Greta camp site provides some storytelling and heritage challenges, it is an important place of personal and public remembering, as illustrated during the 2019 anniversary events that opened up the camp to other historical interpretations. Built upon oral history interviews, ethnographic observations and newspaper analysis, this article discusses memories of war, migration, and life at Greta camp, and the way official discourses and generational and community memories have shaped heritage, memorial and remembering processes at Greta camp.
Louise A Hitchcock, Laura Pisanu and Aren Maeir (Classics & Archaeology) ‘Magical Mystery Tour: The Role of Islands in Connecting Ancient West and East’, in J Boardman et al. (eds), Connecting the Ancient West and East: Studies Presented to Prof. Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (Peeters).
From an ecological standpoint, islands once held allure as imagined laboratories for the isolated study of social and cultural change. However, in The Corrupting Sea, Horden and Purcell have compellingly demonstrated that in reality islands were places of ‘strikingly enhanced interaction … central to the history of the Mediterranean’.
Although their detailed meta-history focuses on the historic periods, much of what they discuss can be identified in prehistory. Our contribution focuses on the unique role that island-scapes play in shrinking maritime space among the disparate cultures of the Mediterranean, bringing ancient West and East together through cultural and economic entanglement.
Through strong interaction, islands could promote security, but in isolation, they could be a source of danger. However, from Sardinia to Cyprus, like the Magical Mystery Tour, islands had ‘everything you need’, because they were connected nodes in a globalised, unrestricted flow of people and goods, the ancient version of capital, where ‘satisfaction was guaranteed’.
Appointments
Congratulations and welcome to all our new and newly appointed colleagues!
Lou Benson has been appointed SHAPS Operations Coordinator.
Dr Sarah Corrigan (@SarahCorrigans) has been appointed as the new Allan J Myers Lecturer in Classics (Latin Language and Literature).
Dr Nat Cutter (@NatCutter) has been awarded a University of Melbourne Early Career Fellowship (see further below).
Dr Edward Jeremiah and Dr Andrew Turner have been appointed to continuing positions as Teaching Specialists in ancient languages. (Learn more about their work here).
Dr Jenny Judge (@judge_jen) has been appointed Lecturer in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science.
Dr Pete Millwood (@PeteMillwood) has been appointed Lecturer in Asian History.
Dr Konstantine Panegyres has been awarded a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Jesse Taig has been appointed as School Support Officer.
Awards
Nat Cutter (Teaching Associate [Periodic], History) has been awarded a 2023 Melbourne Early Career Researcher Grant to support his project, Material Cultures and British-Maghrebi Relations, 1660–1750.
This project draws new connections between book history, readership studies, material culture and early modern British-Maghrebi diplomatic and economic relations, to interrogate the interfaces between cultural perceptions, international engagement, and long-term material legacies. The project’s three strands – British-brokered material exchanges between the Maghreb and Mediterranean world; the broad diffusion of luxurious ‘morocco’ leather in British high society; and the diverse, diffuse provenance and marginalia embedded in British texts about the Maghreb – offer new insights into British-Maghrebi relations, printing and bookbinding, intellectual history, and British national identity and imperial ambitions during the ascent of colonisation, global trade and Atlantic slavery. The funds will support travel to archives and libraries in London, Oxford, Cambridge and elsewhere, as well as research assistance.
Fiona Fidler (HPS) and the repliCATS team have won a University of Melbourne Award for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Research. The team comprises: Fiona Fidler, Martin Bush, Fallon Mody, Eden Smith (SHAPS), Hannah Fraser, Felix Singleton Thorn, Bonnie Wintle, Anca Hanae, David Wilkinson, Aaron Willcox, Peter Vesk, Kahlil Hodgson, Cassie Watts, Rose O’Dea, Elliot Gould, Steven Kambouris, Daniel Hamilton, Raquel Ashton, Rania Poulis, Mel Ross, Richard Sinnott, Glenn Tesla Jayaputera, Ivo Widjaja, Ivy Zhang, Andrew Head, Libby Rumpff, Victoria Hemming, Ans Vercammen, Beth Clarke, Rebecca Groenewegen, Fazil Hassen, Ross Pearson, Mark Burgman and Simine Vazire, Faculty of Arts; Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology; Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and Faculty of Science.
The Grimwade Conservation Services Loong Conservation Project has won the 2022 Australian Museum and Galleries (Victoria) Award for Small Organisations. This project, conducted in partnership with the Bendigo Chinese Association, involved conservation work on Loong, the oldest intact imperial dragon in the world, now on permanent display at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo.
Senior Conservator Holly Jones-Amin told us: “The category was highly contested with 14 nominees, and we are very proud to have led this project for Golden Dragon Museum. The Golden Dragon Museum Collection Manager, Megan Hall … a graduate or our Master in Cultural Materials degree now has a $1000 prize from Archival Survival to spend on materials for the collection.”
For more on the project, you can read updates from the project newsletters and watch the YouTube video below.
Mia Martin Hobbs (PhD in History, 2018) has won the 2022 Oral History Australia Book Award for her book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys (Cambridge University Press), which derived from her PhD research. The OHA website summarises:
The judges [were] unanimous in awarding the 2022 Oral History Australia Book Award to Mia Martin Hobbs’ Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys.
Martin Hobbs has undertaken fifty-four interviews with American and Australian veterans, which she has supplemented with numerous published recollections. Her analysis of the often-conflicting accounts is insightful and nuanced, deftly managing challenging subject matter with grace and skill.
In her examination of return journeys, Martin Hobbs has crafted a history of war’s long aftermath, as well as the ways in which place and memory entwine. As such, the book, with its origins as a PhD thesis, makes a significant contribution to military history, certainly, but also to scholarship on memory, place, trauma, masculinity, race, and national identity. Although some editorial issues suggest a hurried production process, Return to Vietnam is very well structured and written. Martin Hobbs’ book deserves a wide readership and is a highly deserving winner of this award.
Janet McCalman (Professorial Fellow, History) is the recipient of the 2022 Victorian Premier’s History Award for her book Vandemonians: The Repressed History of Colonial Victoria.
Two of our graduates were also among the winners of the Victorian Community History Awards: Alex Dellios (PhD in History, 2017) won the Community Diversity Award for her study, ‘Heritage Making and Migrant Subjects in the Deindustrialising Region of the Latrobe Valley’; and James Lesh (PhD in History, 2018) won the Small History Publication Award for his ‘Report on the Place Name Moreland’, which ‘explores the links between the “Moreland” name and British Caribbean Slavery’, and contributed to the discussion around changing the Moreland City Council name.
Petronella Nel (Grimwade Centre) has received funding from the South Australia Museum to undertake a systematic condition survey and analysis of photo negatives in their collection.
Research Higher Degree Completions
Sam Watts, ‘No Masters But Ourselves: Black Reconstruction in the Deep South City’ (PhD in History)
The destruction of slavery brought about dramatic opportunities and challenges for formerly enslaved Black Southerners, many of whom migrated to Southern cities in search of safety and freedom following the Civil War.
During Reconstruction, the Deep South city offered economic, social and political opportunities that rural life could not, and it was in the city that Black Southerners were able to assert themselves in public and private spaces. These assertions of Black power and Black identity varied from seemingly minor interactions on the sidewalk, in the workplace or at school, to street celebrations, protests, strikes and pitched battles.
Through an examination of Black daily life and the constant threat of white violence during this period, this thesis demonstrates how Black Southerners asserted radical ideas of Black power and freedom in the city space. Despite the relative freedom that urban life offered, white racial violence and brutality remained a constant – making the achievements of Black men, women and children in this period all the more extraordinary. It is through these – often temporary – achievements, that one can see the radical potential of Black Reconstruction to revise the foundations and future of the American republic, to an extent that was not then and has not now been fully realized.
Supervisors: Associate Professor Kat Ellinghaus (now at La Trobe University), Dr Julia Bowes (Hansen Lecturer in US History).
Sam is currently lecturer and coordinator for a subject on the history of the modern civil rights movement, at La Trobe University. He also tutors in the School of Social & Political Sciences at UniMelb. You can read more about his work in his article for SHAPS Forum, Racial Justice, Memory & the Museum.
In 2017 Sam was awarded a travel bursary by the US Consulate in Sydney and, in the same year, the Wyselaskie Scholarship and the Graduate Research Travel Scholarship at Melbourne. In 2018 he received a travel bursary from the College of Charleston to attend a conference and the sesquicentennial celebration of South Carolina’s 1868 Constitution. In 2019 Sam was awarded the Ian Robertson Travel Prize (and a AGRIG Faculty of Arts Graduate Research International Grant).
Research Higher Degree Milestones
The following papers were presented by our postgraduate researchers this month, most of them as part of the annual SHAPS Work-in-Progress Day:
Nathan Avis (Classics & Archaeology), ‘Crafting the Idealised “Other”: Hecataeus of Abdera and the Barbarian Utopia’.
This talk explores the idealised representation of the barbarian ‘Other’ in the ethnographical works of the Greek philosopher Hecataeus (c350–290 BCE). Hecataeus’s utopian vision of the Near East is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of his oeuvre: he depicted Egypt as a prosperous state governed by a philosopher-king, Babylon as a city of scientists, and Judaea as a noble land full of fierce warriors. However, while several scholars have explored this peculiar feature of his works, most have misunderstood it. Those earlier scholars argue that, while there might be vestiges of indigenous knowledge in his works, Hecataeus’s framework of interpretation was fundamentally Greek in outlook. For example, it is often argued that he misrepresents Egypt by depicting it as an orientalised version of Plato’s Kallipolis, or that his portrait of Judaea is nothing more than a Jewish Sparta. I intend to contest this scholarly consensus. Hecataeus was indeed capable of incorporating ‘alien wisdom’ into his philosophical speculation on the ideal state. A detailed study of this process of intercultural dialectic ought to illuminate Hecataeus’s innovative approach to comparative philosophy.
Prasakti Ramadhana (Dana) Fahadi (History), ‘History of Digital Media for Gender-Based Violence Intervention in Indonesia’ (PhD confirmation seminar).
The goal of this project is to investigate and track the practice of gender-based violence (GBV) interventions through digital media since the inception of internet technology in Indonesia in the 1990s. GBV is defined for this project as harmful acts directed at an individual based on their gender. It is rooted in gender inequality, the abuse of power and harmful norms (UNHCR, 2021). The project focuses on organisations, movements, or individuals (referred to hereafter as ‘actors’) that utilise the features of digital media to engage in raising awareness of, speaking up against, and advocating for greater protection from GBV in Indonesia. This research will broaden the scope of previous studies on activism to oppose gender-based violence by interrogating various modes of activism while also attempting to provide a more in-depth investigation into the practice of media-facilitated activism in Indonesia, with a focus on efforts to eliminate GBV in the past 25 years. The project will also enhance understandings of the constraints, opportunities and innovations underpinning the practice of digital feminist activism within societies of the global South.
Stuart Ibrahim (Classics & Archaeology), ‘Third Intermediate Period / Iron Age I-IIA Raphia and The Fate of the North Sinai Forts during the Bronze to Iron Age Transition’.
The Bronze Age collapse (c1133–1177 BCE) saw Egyptian influence decline in the Levant, until Shoshenq I (c925 BCE) invaded the region. Before this invasion, their fortresses in the north Sinai / south Levantine region met an unknown fate, with Shoshenq’s relief at Karnak referring to two of them, Rafah / Raphia and Gaza as foreign sites. To address this problem, this talk will address the impact of the Bronze Age collapse on the Iron Age north Sinai and southern Levant, both Egyptian textual references and archaeological evidence for when these sites were abandoned, the use of cultural package(s) for the relevant Iron Age cultural groups, and the examination of Shoshenq’s Levantine campaign, including the various interpretations of the Bubastis Portal city list (before providing my own). The relevant results will be compared together, to establish the fate of the north Sinai sites.
Ines Jahudka (Hansen Scholar in History), ‘Laypeople, Death, and The Post-Mortem Process in Early Modern England’ (PhD confirmation seminar).
Prior to the implementation of institutions such as the police force or centralised forensics, decisions about sudden or suspicious deaths were made by laypeople. This may have been from their involvement in inquests as witnesses or jurors, or via their official duties as coroner or Searcher of the Dead. My thesis will examine the contribution of the layperson to the medico-legal and post-mortem process.
Arthur Knight (History), ‘Art of The Lost Future: Cultural Memory of Martial Law in Philippine Visual Art’ (PhD confirmation seminar).
Art of The Lost Future is a study of works of visual art made during and following the martial law in The Philippines, a period in which authoritarian President Ferdinand E. Marcos arrogated total political power, oversaw many human rights violations, and concluding in 1986 with mass protests known as the People Power Revolution. However, in the decades since the end of the regime, martial law’s legacy remains deeply contested. In recent years, the rehabilitation of the Marcos Family by President Rodrigo Duterte, frequent mass political protests in which organisers invoke People Power, and the 2022 election of the late dictator’s son Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr demonstrate the multifarious ways the martial law period is remembered and represented in contemporary Philippines, or arguably how it has been forgotten in collective memory. In the absence of large-scale public sites of memory, this thesis reflects on how martial law has been remembered by analysing Philippine visual art as a medium of cultural memory, interfacing art recalling resistance and revolution against Marcos with representations of widespread authoritarian nostalgia for the “golden years” of Marcos’ dictatorship.
Amy Mendelsohn (Classics & Archaeology), ‘Agent-based Modelling on the Roads of Roman Britain’.
Archaeology provides many opportunities for applying agent-based models (ABMs) to better understand how individual actions might combine into complex societal-level behaviour. There are open questions as to the purpose of the Antonine Itineraries, a list of travel routes in the Roman Empire from around 300 CE, and the degree to which they should be used in studies of connectivity and interaction. In addition, much is unknown about ways the economy of Roman Britain can be formalised. How appropriate are the Antonine Itineraries as a proxy for the road network of Roman Britain, and are they a good way to conceptualise potential economic behaviours?
This project uses ABMs where individual agents have decision-making rules regarding trade. Projected pottery distributions will be compared to the archaeological record. Computer simulations will be run with different parameter values representing hypotheses of interest. Prior works involved ABMs on the Itineraries without comparison to archaeological data, or looked at the impact of social connectivity in a market-based economy driven by known supply and demand. This research proposes looking at the Antonine Itineraries as a case study for distances, decision strategies, and examining the relationships between spatial and social configurations in Roman Britain.
Aleksandra Riabichenko (History), ‘Evading Justice: The Post-War Trajectories of Survival of Nazi Collaborators in The Soviet Union and Abroad During the Cold War’ (PhD confirmation seminar).
The thesis investigates the history of strategies of escaping justice by Soviet collaborators in the post-war years in the Australia, Soviet Union, and the US. Besides those who were convicted by the Soviet regime right after the Nazi retreat, many managed to escape from Soviet retribution and went unpunished; others fled to Western countries under the displaced person immigration programme. An examination of the collaborators’ biographical (self)-reconstructions embedded in the prosecution files, immigration materials, and other first-person accounts, provides insights into the narratives they used to conceal, distort, or rationalise their wartime actions in different political and social conditions. Investigating the similarities and differences in collaborators’ trajectories of evading justice in the Soviet Union and the liberal democracies sheds new light on the political and social sentiments of the post-war societies towards the co-existence with collaborators. The project aims to offer new perspectives on the studying of perpetrators and post-war social realities through the lens of the criminal trials.
Tonia Sellers (History), ‘”Romantic, idealistic, fiercely partisan”: Emotion and the Communist Party of Australia, 1920–1945′ (MA completion seminar).
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. Using 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 these expectations, and aims to show how communists managed and expressed their feelings in this environment.
Jonathan Tehusijarana (History), ‘Between the Pen and the Sword: Student Soldiers and the Image of Ideal Youth in Indonesia’ (PhD completion seminar).
Jonathan’s thesis examines the role played by Indonesia’s student soldiers, active in the Student Armies of the Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949) in informing the image of ideal youth (pemuda) in the country during the New Order regime. It traces the New Order’s ideal youth, militarised, disciplined, and apolitical, to the values of the Student Armies. By analysing the development of a student-soldier identity and its subsequent dissemination by veterans in the post-war period, this thesis examines the roots of one strand of youth discourse in Indonesia and the processes through which it was used to support the interests of a military dictatorship.
Shan Windscript (History), ‘Making the Socialist Modern Self: Writing a Diary in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1966–1976’ (PhD completion seminar).
Writing a diary was a widespread activity in China during the Cultural Revolution. Yet most of these personal documents remain unexplored due to a pervasive assumption that, under the Communist regime, the diary fell victim to the state’s ideological monopoly. What was once part of a flourishing culture of Maoist autobiographical self-fashioning has until now been treated as evidence for the totalitarian destruction of the “private self.” Drawing on extensive archives of unpublished diaries of the period and oral interviews with former diarists, this thesis provides the first scholarly attempt to explore the significance of the everyday practice for the production of modern, revolutionary subjecthood. Approaching journal-keeping as a means of ideological self-subjectivation, I show how diarists strove to reconstitute themselves into historical subjects for change through engagement with hegemonic languages of time, self-criticism, space, and gender. Yet the diary, as a volatile genre conducive to the fragmentation and displacement of the self, also amplified the tensions and contradictions within the discursive processes of self-reconstitution. This thesis argues that the diary served both as an instance and driver of the crisis at heart of the Maoist agenda of revolutionary modernisation, highlighting the complex intersections of individual self-making and socialist state-building.
Behzad Zerehdaran (History), ‘Genesis and Development of Concept of Rights during the Constitutional Revolution of Iran’ (PhD completion seminar).
The long nineteenth century in Iran was the age of establishment, consolidation, decline, and subversion of Qajar absolutism. Justice, separation of powers, equality, citizenship, and legal codification were among the main themes constitutionalists discussed in late Qajar Iran. On the other side, their conservative opponents argued in favour of absolute monarchy and the king’s divine right to reign. The striking point was the presence of the language of rights in most of the arguments for and against constitutionalism. The participants used the language of rights to justify their claims, challenge their rivals, and convince their followers; yet, it was unclear what they meant by the term ‘Right.’ Each locution about human rights needs clear answers to the questions of foundation and justification. To address the foundational question is to postulate whether human rights are natural or instrumental. In addressing the justificatory question, the philosophers have appealed to notions such as autonomy, dignity, human capabilities, basic needs, agency, rationality, and fundamental interests. In this thesis, I have studied the evolution of concept of Right from the beginning of Qajar era until the constitutional revolution of 1906.
Projects
Chariot undergraduate history journal launched its 2022 issue, ‘Gender, Power, & Culture‘. This excellent student initiative is now in its fifth year.
SHAPS staff, fellows, students, alumni: if you have news items for the monthly SHAPS digest, please email us the details.