SOPHI News and Events
How Free should Free Speech be? Philosophical Perspectives
Public symposium
Convenor: Duncan Ivison
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
Refectory, Quadrangle Building, The University of Sydney
1:00pm to 5:00pm (reception to follow)
- Simone Chambers (Toronto)
‘Civility and Public Reason’ - Philip Pettit (Princeton)
‘Freedoms of Speech’ - Jeremy Waldron (NYU)
‘What Should a Well-Ordered Society Look Like?’
with comments by Helen Irving (Sydney) and others.
No registration fee, but booking is essential.
Contact
Travel subsidies are available for postgraduate students from outside the Sydney region. Please contact Elia Mamprin
The symposium is made possible through the generous support of Professors John and Christine Furedy, alumni of the University of Sydney.
More details about the symposium
Angkor mystery explained
'After rising to sublime heights, the sacred city may have engineered its own downfall'
(National Geographic July 2009)
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
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
SOPHI in the news
Classics recruit focuses on politically incorrect Greek
The Australian
Kevin Lee Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr Sebastiana Nervegna, speaks to the Australian's 'Higher Education Supplement' commentator, Luke Slattery about soap opera, comedy, sex and the Greeks, and Classics at the University of Sydney:
'ON my way to interview Sebastiana Nervegna, the latest recruit to a buoyant University of Sydney classics department, I give the address to the taxi driver. "You're interviewing an academic," he snorts. "How exciting. Not."
'His scorn evaporates when I explain that Nervegna is an expert in Menander, a late 4th century Greek playwright who refocused Athenian comedy on domestic intrigues: his tightly constructed plots are driven by sensational lusts and infidelities, peopled with the rich and the poor.
'"So he invented the soap opera," asserts the cabbie with attitude. "Did he also invent farce?' Minutes later I put the question to Nervegna, and she explains that although Menander's work seems to have inaugurated romantic comedy and contains elements that could be seen as farcical, this kind of comedy had precursors.'
Read the full article here
Which kind of happiness to pursue?
The Herald
'There are many diverse and competing conceptions of the nature of happiness. What one person means by "happiness" can be completely different to what the next person means, far more different than we commonly imagine.
If someone said they wanted to talk about momentary sensations, moods, desires, beliefs, achievements, activities, states of the world and what made for a flourishing human life, you might expect them to be talking for quite some time. You might also expect them to use different words to talk about each of these different subjects. Yet one word is often used to talk about all these things; and that word in English is "happiness"'.
Read the full article here
The Ancient Art of Hospitality
The Herald
'THE Greeks and Romans knew what to do about asylum seekers. Our very language reflects the ancient nature of the problem. Refugee, asylum, migrant, sanctuary, all are derived from Greek and Latin roots. Yet the difference between the ancient response and the modern one is striking. For the Greeks and Romans, the correct action to take wasn't debatable. Every right-thinking person knew what to do. When people were washed up on your shore, you fed and clothed them, and offered them a helping hand.'
Read the full article here
Sawyer Seminar Series
Generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Sydney
Session Three
The Impact of the Antipodes on Ecological Thought: Atlantic Justice in the Pacific World: Property, Rights, and Indigeneity
Convenors: Duncan Ivison and Andrew Fitzmaurice
Sankar Muthu (Chicago)
Global Connections in Enlightenment Political Thought
Jennifer Pitts (Chicago)
Europe, empire, and the boundaries of international law
Andrew Fitzmaurice (Sydney)
Sir Travers Twiss and the doctrine of territorium nullius
As Europeans turned to the Pacific they brought with them a well-established Atlantic framework for thinking about rights. And, indeed, thinking about the Pacific helped to inspire some of the most prominent Enlightenment philosophers and historians. But by the nineteenth century this whole edifice was falling apart. The understanding of what it was to have a right underwent dramatic changes, which often had devastating consequences for colonized peoples. The aim of this seminar will be to examine the role of the Pacific in the transformation of our understanding of rights.
Friday, 17 July,
1-5pm, Sutherland Room, Holme Building, Science Road, The University of Sydney
The session is free to attend, but registration is essential. Please email to register.
Go to the Mellon Seminar webpage
Asian Studies Association of Australia Presidents’ Prize and DK Award
Dr. Damian Evans, ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Archaeology, has won the Asian Studies Association of Australia Presidents’ Prize and DK Award for his PhD thesis (written whilst a student in the Department) - ‘Putting Angkor on the Map: A New Survey of a Khmer “Hydraulic City” in Historical and Theoretical Context’. Damian’s thesis was selected in a competition that included theses from ten other universities in Australia.
On behalf of the School, many congratulations to Damian! This is a wonderful achievement and a tribute not only to him, but to his supervisors, the Department of Archaeology and the ACL, where I know he has been a valuable colleague. It is yet another indication of the fantastic work done by colleagues in the School.
Premier's History Award winner
Dr Michael McDonnell, of SOPHI's Department of History, is the winner of the General History Prize of the NSW Premier’s History Awards 2008 for his The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (UNC Press). This is a terrific achievement and yet another indication of the extraordinary work being done in our School and in the Department of History. The judges write:
‘McDonnell’s research is meticulous, and, despite its academic rigour, the writing style is accessible and engaging. Indeed, it offers a model approach for its field. The Politics of War can proudly take its place beside that small but influential group of Australian produced works that have dared to engage and shape American history.'
Read more
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.
Unpacking the Collection: Museums, Identity and Agency
Dr Annie Clarke of the Department of Archaeology and convener of the Heritage Studies Program is one of ten people to have been awarded the "SAR Prize Session in Anthropological Archaeology."
Annie will attend a five-day Advanced Seminar at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, during which she and her colleagues will have the opportunity for sustained conversations on their topic of how museum collections have been underutilized as sources of information about the nature and characteristics of cross-cultural interactions between Indigenous artifact makers and traders and collectors.
More details
2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council award
Associate Professor Rick Benitez has been awarded a 2008 Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC – formerly Carrick) citation for teaching that leads to "positive transformations" not just in students' academic understanding, but in their understanding of themselves. This is a remarkable achievement, especially given how difficult and demanding the application process for these citations can be. It is a huge tribute to Rick’s passionate commitment to teaching and the enormous amount of work he puts into his students. Learn more about the citation here: http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2487
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
Philosophy of Religion Seminars
- The seminar is held 4:30 – 6:00 on the last Friday of each month. Please see the Philosophy website for more information.