SOPHI News and Events
Faculty of Art teaching awards
Congratulations to Martin Gibbs (Archaeology) and Chris Hilliard, who have won the 'Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching (Design and Practice)' award.
The Faculty’s awards recognise outstanding contributions to teaching and learning, and winners are strongly encouraged both to develop their applications with a view to applying for Vice Chancellor’s and Australian Learning and Teaching Council Awards, and, as importantly, to share their work with their colleagues across the Faculty.
Award recipients will be presented with their citations at a ceremony in Semester 1 next year, where they will each make a brief presentation about their work.
Darwin's Armada on ABC Television
Darwin's Brave New World
Series begins Sunday 8th November on ABC1
A new television series (in three episodes) and based on Iain's McCalman's book (Department of History) Darwin's Armada: How four voyagers to Australasia won the battle for evolution and changed the world begins in on ABC1 on Sunday 8th November.
'The story of how four young voyagers to the southern hemisphere, Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Russell Wallace, revolutionised science and gave birth to an extraordinary theory about evolution on earth' (ABC TV)
Watch the trailer on YouTube
Ian McCalman staff profile
Warwick Anderson (History), wins NSW Premier’s General History Prize
Congratulations to our colleague Professor Warwick Anderson (History), who has won the 2009 NSW Premier’s General History Prize for his extraordinary recent book, The Collectors of Lost Souls: turning Kuru scientists into whitemen (Duke University Press), which tells the story of kuru, a disease which caused muscle weakness, uncontrollable tremors, then loss of all coordination and ultimately death.
This was a remarkable category this year, as the three other nominated books were also from the Department of History! They were: Clare Corbould for Becoming African Americans: Black public life in Harlem 1919-1939; Judith Keene, Treason on the Airwaves: three Allied Broadcasters on Axis Radio during WWII; and Iain McCalman, Darwin’s Armada: how four voyages to Australasia won the battle for evolution.
Two of the History department’s alumni also took out awards; Rachel Landers won the Multimedia History Prize for her documentary, A Northern Town, which is about race relations in Kempsey. Caroline Ford was awarded the NSW Archival Research Fellowship.
Read the full article here
SOPHI's successful ARC Discvery Projects for 2010 announced
26 October, 2009
Archaeology
Prof Roland Fletcher; Prof J Riegel; Dr B Li; A/Prof C Pottier; Prof M Stark; Dr JN Miksic; Dr C Ang
Project: Greater Angkor from ancestry to abandonment: the growth, daily life and transformation of the suburbs of Angkor
Dr Martin Gibbs
Project: Beyond the New World: A 16th century Spanish colony and its impact on indigenous populations in the Solomon Islands
Classics and Ancient History
Prof EG Csapo; Prof PJ Wilson; Em/Prof JR Green; Dr EG Robinson; Dr SG Nervegna (APD 4 years)
Project: The Theatrical Revolution: The Expansion of Theatre Outside Athens
Dr Andrew Hartwig (APD 4 years)
Project: Plato Comicus and Greek comedy: a study of his dramatic career
History
Dr Emma Christopher (ARF 5 years)
Project: Slavery, freedom and colonial development: Robert Bostock and his legacy
Dr James B Curran
Project: Australian/American relations in the era of the new nationalism
Dr Chris Hilliard (QEII 5 years)
Project: The politics of reading: Citizenship, law, and literacy in England, 1867-1960
Dr Martin Thomas; A/Prof LM Barwick; Prof AJ Marett
Project: Intercultural inquiry in a transnational context: Exploring the legacy of the 1948 American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land
Mr Richard White
Project: Touring the past: tourism and history in Australia 1850-2010
Gender and Cultural Studies
Dr Natalya Lusty; Dr HG Groth
Project: Dreams: A Cultural History, 1840-1940
Philosophy
Prof Stephen Gaukroger; Dr Anik Waldow
Project: The rise of empiricism and the attempt to produce a unified understanding of the world, 1680-1750
SOPHI secures 2 of the university's 17 ARC Future Fellowships
The Australian Research Council (ARC) recently announced a new scheme, ARC Future Fellowships, aimed at retaining highly qualified mid-career researches in Australia. The scheme aims to boost Australia’s research and innovation capacity in areas of national importance.
The University has been successful in securing 17 of the newly created fellowships, and SOPHI congratulates its two successful fellows, Fiona Allon and Dr Martin Thomas.
Dr Fiona Allon
Project title: The Wealth Effect: A cultural analysis of prosperity, financialisation and everyday life in contemporary Australia
Dr Martin E Thomas
Project title: Expedition to Arnhem Land: Intercultural inquiry in a transnational context
Read the full article here
SOPHI in the news
WWII: Treason on the Airwaves
Late Night Live, Radio National
30 September 2009, repeated 1 October 2009
In converation with Phillip Adams, Judith Keene looks how the radio has been effectively used as a propaganda tool.
Read the transcript or download the podcast here
China before Mao
Rear Vision, Radio National
30 September, 2009
Radio National's 'Rear Vision' interview the History Department's Professor John Wong, among others, on a program examining China and the Communist revolution on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Communist rule.
Read the transcript or download the podcast here
Popular pioneers
The Weekend Australian
26 September 2009
Richard Waterhouse claims American entertainers found tolerance in Australia more than 150 years ago.
'Waterhouse, bicentennial professor of Australian history at the University of Sydney, has spent decades researching and recording the stories of dozens of white and African-American performers who made the journey, some never returning to the US'. writes Elizabeth Meryment
Read the full article here
Four hours work, then rest
Sydney Morning Herald
4 August 2009
"Whoever has not two thirds of his day for him self is a slave," declared Friedrich Nietzsche, part of a long tradition of thinkers who thought our lives should contain work, leisure, and sleep in equal balance.
Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, considered leisure to be constitutive of the good life, in fact, its primary purpose. Having to work was an unfortunate but sometimes necessary diversion from the important activities and experiences that make for a flourishing human existence.
From this perspective, modern Western society has got its work-life priorities topsy-turvy.
Read the full article here
Angkor mystery revealed
National Geographic
July 2009
'After rising to sublime heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall'
According to a team of researchers headed by the Department of Archaeology's Professor Roland Fletcher, the great medieval city of Angkor was abandoned due to the combined effects of climate change, the vast extent of city, extensive clearance of forest and the massive scale of its complicated water system.
The findings were based on the research of the Greater Angkor Project, a collaboration between the University, the great French research agency EFEO and APSARA the Cambodian agency that manages Angkor.
- Read the National Geographic Feature Article
- Read the University of Sydney's article
- Read article published in The Australian
Website wins AFI award
An interactive ABC website about Gallipoli, produced in collaboration with the Archaeological Computing Laboratory, has won an AFI Award.
An immersive, interactive ABC website about the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli produced in collaboration with the University's Archaeological Computing Laboratory (ACL) has won an AFI Award in an inaugural award category called Screen Content Innovation.
Read the University of Sydney's article
AFI Home Page
Archaeological Computing Lab collaborates with the ABC on Gallipoli
Staff from the University of Sydney's Archaeological Computing Laboratory (ACL) have collaborated with the ABC Digital Innovation Unit to develop an immersive, interactive website about the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. The ABC launched the Gallipoli: The First Day site to coincide with Anzac Day.
A number of SOPHI staff were involved in the 'Gallipoli: The First Day' project, including the Director of the ACL, Dr Ian Johnson. Andrew Wilson, GIS Data Coordinator for the ACL, undertook geo-referencing of historical maps for the project. Steven Hayes, Business Development Manager for the ACL, worked extensively on the Heurist database, along with Kim Jackson and Maria Shvedova.
Read the full article here
Enter the Gallipoli: The First Day site
Moira Gatens appointed to the Spinoza Chair, University of Amsterdam
Congratulations to Moira Gatens (Philosophy), who has been appointed to the Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam in 2010.
This is a great honour for Moira - and through her, for philosophy at Sydney and in Australia more generally. Previous holders of the chair include Hilary Putnam, Robert Pippin, Judith Butler, Jonathan Israel, Albrecht Wellmar, Nancy Fraser….to name just a few. The Chair involves giving two public lectures as well as a series of staff and student seminars at the University of Amsterdam. Given her pathbreaking work on Spinoza, among other things, we can think of no better holder of such a Chair!
Read the full article here
Sawyer Seminar Series
Generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Sydney
Session Five
Varieties of Empire in the Antipodes: Taking Over and Letting Go
3–5.30pm, Friday 30 October 2009, Holme and Sutherland Rooms, Holme Building, University of Sydney
This session will be followed by the launch of Kirsten McKenzie’s book, A Swindler’s Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty. 6pm for a 6.30 launch.
Convenor: Dr Kirsten McKenzie
Discussant: Angela Woollacott (Manning Clark Professor of History, Australian National University)
Emma Christopher (University of Sydney)
The non-free white men and their freed African slaves: claims to British Liberty and its realities in Australia and Sierra Leone
James Curran (University of Sydney)
The “great age of confusion”: Intellectuals and the “new nationalism” in Australia
Mark McKenna (University of Sydney)
Turning away from Britain: Manning Clark, History, Public Intellectuals and the end of Empire in Australia
Kirsten McKenzie (University of Sydney)
The Daemon Behind the Curtain: prize slaves, convict escapees and the antipodean theatres of liberty
Settler colonialism has raised profound questions about the process of imperial expansion and the limits of decolonisation. The papers in this session bookend the period from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth centuries, dealing with such diverse commentators as public intellectuals, renegade slave traders and maverick convict escapees. They explore how northern hemisphere debates about political power, social status, national identity and ideas of freedom were worked through in southern settler colonies. Battles over the nature of citizenship were fought out on the imperial periphery in ways that would profoundly shape political rights in Europe. By the end of the twentieth century new varieties of nationalism were grappling with the problem of divesting themselves of a civic identity associated with imperial models they had helped to forge.
The session is free to attend, but registration is essential. Please email to register.
Go to the Mellon Seminar webpages
Other SOPHI News
Archaeology and ABC Earth
ABC Earth, a project developed by the Archaeology Computing Laboratory (ACL) at the University of Sydney and the ABC has now been launched, at http://www.abc.net.au/earth/
The layer, which can be viewed in Google Earth, includes national news and video news updated every 5 minutes, stories from 50 Years of national and international news, Foreign Correspondent as well as Local Radio.
First Australian Mellon Grant
The University of Sydney has become the first Australian institution to win a prestigious Sawyer Seminar grant from the US-based Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The grant will support a one-year program of research and expert seminars into the way in which ideas flowed between the Indo-Pacific worlds and the Atlantic worlds over three centuries, from 1700 until today.
Titled The Antipodean laboratory: Humanity, Sovereignty, and Environment in Southern Oceans and Lands, 1700-2009, the Seminar will support cross-disciplinary research into how "the northern hemisphere used comparisons with the Pacific and the Antipodes as a way of thinking about the world," says Professor Iain McCalman AO.
More information