Arts Faculty News

The newly formed Research Unit in European Philosophy in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies brings together experts and scholars in the areas of Aesthetics, Ancient Philosophy, the History of Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Hermeneutics and Philosophy and Judaism.

The unit’s core members are:

• Professor Andrew Benjamin (Director)
• Associate Professor Dirk Balzy
• Dr Franz-Josef Deiters
• Dr Michael Fagenblat
• Associate Professor Karen Green.

Forthcoming events for this year include:

• Workshop on Hegel’s Aesthetics (11 November 2009)
• Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Annual Conference: Philosophy and the Work Of Art (29, 30 November & 1 December 2009)

During the course of 2010 workshops and seminars are planned on ‘Hellenism and Continental Philosophy’, Hamlet and a series of lectures on the ‘Philosophy, Theory and the History of Art’.

Kevin Foster, Associate Professor in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, has released a new book titled Lost Worlds: Latin America and the Imagining of Empire.

Lost Worlds is an illuminating account of how both an imagined and real Latin America has become a privileged, symbolic site for working through the crises of national identity of Britain, the United States and Australia.

“From British adventure fiction to football, from utopian workingman’s colony to the Falkland Islands, this book sensitively explores how the lost worlds of Latin America have served to reimagine and refashion the lost worlds of the English-speaking west.” Professor Noël Valis, Yale University

Published through Pluto Press, UK.

On the 23rd-25th of August 2009, the University of Copenhagen in partnership with Monash University’s School of English, Communications and Performance Studies and Social Aesthetics Research Unit held a symposium on aesthetics, culture and social life, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The event brought together scholars at the forefront of investigations into socio-aesthetics and cultural analysis. It was the first of a series of planned symposia engaging with the theme of Socio-Aesthetics. Drawing together scholars from various fields of the humanities and social sciences, the focus upon interdisciplinary exchange was noteworthy, with delegates interrogating a wide range of phenomena.

The three-day conference saw contributions from more than 40 academics from Monash University, the University of Copenhagen and many other international institutions. The symposium included two keynote speakers, Gerhard Schulze and Scott Lash. Both provided telling, yet dramatically divergent accounts of the dimensions of the aesthetic in social and economic life.

The symposium was a great experience that has set high expectations for the next socio-aesthetics symposium, tentatively scheduled 2011, in Melbourne. Congratulations to all delegates and organizers for their considerable efforts.

See Social Aesthetics Research Unit for further research activities and events.

For further information on the Symposium read Michael Walsh’s report or view the University of Copenhagen’s SocioAesthetics site.

Dr Therese Davis, co-director with Dr Adrian Martin of the new Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory, recently participated as an international guest in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigeneity and Performance, a series of international research workshops funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK.

Dr Davis gave a presentation on how Indigenous filmmakers in Australia are adopting and adapting film as a means for transmitting Indigenous cultural knowledge and history in ways that are radicalising conceptions of historical film and knowledge.

The Heritage and Material Culture workshop analysed functions of heritage within specific social/cultural groups as well as in cross-cultural situations. Heritage was considered not just in terms of transmitting and preserving objects, discourses, values and practices, but also in an expanded sense as mobilising historical understanding or social memory to nourish a desire for solidarity between generations.

Further information on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Indigeneity and Performance is available from the Beyond Text site.

Travel in Atomic Sunshine

Robin Gerster’s study of the post-war occupation of Japan, Travels in Atomic Sunshine has been shortlisted in the History Book category of the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

Travels in Atomic Sunshine is published by Scribe Publications, 2008.

Early bird registration for the time . transcendence . performance conference closes Friday 24 July.

Register online for time . transcendence . performance

If you have any issues registering, please contact TTP2009@arts.monash.edu.au

Further information about the conference is available on the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies site.

Monash Arts has been awarded three new ARC Linkage Grants in the latest funding round for the following projects:

Staging Sappho: investigating new methodologies in Classical Performance Reception

Researchers

• Dr Jane Griffith, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
• Professor Andrew Benjamin, Centre for Comparative Literature
• and Cultural Studies
• Professor Simon Goldhill, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
• Mr Stephen  Armstrong, Malthouse Theatre
• Michael Kantor, Malthouse Theatre
• Ms Maryanne Lynch, Malthouse Theatre
• Ms Christina Potts, Bell Shakespeare Company
• Prof Edith Hall, Royal Holloway University of London
• Dr Margaret Reynolds, Queen Mary University of London
• Prof Lorna Hardwick, Open University

Partner organisation

• Malthouse Theatre

Project summary

This project will integrate theories of Classical reception and textual transmission with performance theory and practice. As such, it will further the knowledge base of the discipline of Classical Reception Studies by introducing a new methodology to the field, and will also benefit the community in terms of cultural engagement.

Gough Whitlam: A Living Democracy

Researcher

• Professor Jenny Hocking, National Centre for Australian Studies

Partner organisations

• National Library of Australia
• National Archives of Australia

Project summary

This project will contribute to knowledge of a significant public figure, the former Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, his government and his life after politics. This second volume of the Whitlam biography will complete the definitive, contemporary, biographical study of him. It will create an original store of knowledge through its extensive interviews with key individuals including Gough Whitlam that will augment the Oral History collection held by the National Library of Australia. The project will also generate a unique multimedia platform for researchers to access digitized research materials repurposed through the Whitlam section of the Prime Ministers website with the National Archives of Australia.

Radicalisation, Counter Radicalisation, and De Radicalisation: Developing a New Understanding of Terrorism in the Australian Context

Researchers

• Associate Professor David Wright-Neville, School of Political and Social Inquiry
• Dr Peter Lentini, School of Political and Social Inquiry
• Dr Simon Moss, School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine
• Dr Gaetano Ilardi, Victoria Police

Partner organisations

• Department of Premier & Cabinet
• Victoria Police
• Australian Federal Police
• Department of Justice

Project summary

Concentrating on the unique drivers of extremism within Victoria (and Australia), the study will enhance counter terrorism stakeholders’ understanding of domestic radicalisation.

This will assist in designing policies appropriate for Australian circumstances that can:

• pre-empt, prevent and detect radicalisation without jeopardising social cohesion
• reduce Australia’s reliance on overseas counter-radicalisation and de-radicalisation models, where practitioners confront different community dynamics.

Working towards understanding what causes radicalization in Australia, the project offers to enhance national security and by addressing local circumstances carries the prospect of creating more cost-efficient counter terrorism practices.

Marjorie Barnard

Associate Professor Maryanne Dever (Women’s Studies) is a recipient of a 2009 Manning Clark House/Copyright Agency of Australia Fellowship. The Fellowships, now in their third year, enable scholars to stay in home of the celebrated historian while conducting research in Canberra.

Manning Clark House, designed by Robin Boyd in 1952, is the house where Manning and Dymphna Clark lived and worked from 1953 until their deaths in 1991 and 2000 respectively. Manning Clark’s roof top study, where the six volumes of A History of Australia and his other works were written, remains much as it was when the Clarks lived in the house.

While in Canberra, Associate Professor Dever is working on an edition of letters from the writer, Marjorie Barnard, to the influential critic Nettie Palmer. Barnard is perhaps best known for her collaborative novels written with Flora Eldershaw and her collection of short stories, The Persimmon Tree (1943). The letters, held in the National Library, date from the 1930s to the 1960s and provide unparalleled insights into Barnard’s developing career, her successes as a fiction writer and her later disappointments in the face of an increasingly indifferent reading public and a hostile Cold War political culture. Barnard’s letters are also valuable for the insights they offer into the negotiations and compromises that single, university-educated women of that day were required to make in pursuit of their professional ambitions.

More information about Manning Clark House Fellowships is available from the Manning Clarke House website.

Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research

Bruce Scates and Liz Beattie at Anzac Cove

Professor Bruce Scates, Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies, joined Ms Liz Beattie MP and several of her colleagues on a study tour of Korea and the Gallipoli Peninsula over April/May. The Premier’s ‘Spirit of Anzac Tour’ is funded by the State Government and involves the selection of 10 students each year from secondary schools across the State for a two week study tour of Australian battlefields overseas.

Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Premier in Multicultural Affairs, Ms Beattie led the delegation and officiated at several commemorative services in both Turkey and Korea, including ANZAC Day functions hosted by Australian Embassies and Consulates.

Professor Scates acted as historical advisor to the tour at the invitation of the Premier. He led the 18 member delegation across the ANZAC battlefields, interpreting the site and fostering student exchanges with Turkey. The National Centre for Australian Studies has played a leading role in establishing an Australian Studies Centre at the University on 18 March near Gallipoli.

Cover of Numen Old Men

Joseph Gelfer, a PSI Adjunct Research Associate, has a new book in press, “Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy”. Canvassing the mythopoetic, evangelical, and to a lesser extent Catholic men’s movements, “Numen, Old Men” argues that masculine spirituality is little more than a thinly veiled patriarchal spirituality. Gay spirituality is then offered as a form of masculine spirituality which to a large degree resists patriarchal tendencies, suggesting a queering of spirituality could be useful for all men, both gay and straight. For further information visit the Equinox Publishing website.

An insight into the research contained in the book can be seen in a recent article of Gelfer’s – Pray like a man in The Guardian (UK)