Eurasian exchange and artistic transformation in art. This project aims to bring European and Chinese art history into dialogue. It explores the early Italian Renaissance in the larger geopolitical context of Mongol Eurasia and the Yuan Empire, to address the questions of influence, contact, and exchange. In reframing the development of early European art as a fundamentally cross-cultural phenomenon, this project aims to offer a better understanding of the roots of our own global visual culture. ....Eurasian exchange and artistic transformation in art. This project aims to bring European and Chinese art history into dialogue. It explores the early Italian Renaissance in the larger geopolitical context of Mongol Eurasia and the Yuan Empire, to address the questions of influence, contact, and exchange. In reframing the development of early European art as a fundamentally cross-cultural phenomenon, this project aims to offer a better understanding of the roots of our own global visual culture. The project will benefit and enrich the study of cross-cultural contact and exchange in art history as a larger field, leading to the re-examination of art in the Australasian region.Read moreRead less
Everyday Obligations: Households and Economic Change in the British Isles 1650-1850. The project will develop scholarship about the history of family and households in the British Isles during industrialisation and associated changes. The resulting published work will advance our knowledge of the social implications of demographic change; the relationship between people and environment; the impact of industrialisation on demography as well as the micro-economies of past households and families. ....Everyday Obligations: Households and Economic Change in the British Isles 1650-1850. The project will develop scholarship about the history of family and households in the British Isles during industrialisation and associated changes. The resulting published work will advance our knowledge of the social implications of demographic change; the relationship between people and environment; the impact of industrialisation on demography as well as the micro-economies of past households and families. An innovative aspect will be the use of Australian historical sources, particularly for Van Diemen's Land, to cast light on the history of Britain before 1850.Read moreRead less
Battlefields of memory: places of war and remembrance in medieval and early modern England and Scotland. This project investigates how sites of war are negotiated and remembered. By analysing the battlefields of England and Scotland during the pivotal period 1250-1700, this project will show how places of war became important sites of remembrance and how remembrance of war became central to western national cultures. The project will establish significant advances in our understanding of how sit ....Battlefields of memory: places of war and remembrance in medieval and early modern England and Scotland. This project investigates how sites of war are negotiated and remembered. By analysing the battlefields of England and Scotland during the pivotal period 1250-1700, this project will show how places of war became important sites of remembrance and how remembrance of war became central to western national cultures. The project will establish significant advances in our understanding of how sites of violent conflict have become socially and politically meaningful. Read moreRead less
Words and Their Consequences: Freedom of Expression in Britain, 1960-1979. This project plans to use contests over obscenity and racism as lenses to understand changes in freedom of expression in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. What was the purpose of free speech? How did the liberty to write and read relate to ideas about personal autonomy? What effects do words have on those who read or hear them? Working with previously untapped archival material on regulating obscene publications and the ....Words and Their Consequences: Freedom of Expression in Britain, 1960-1979. This project plans to use contests over obscenity and racism as lenses to understand changes in freedom of expression in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s. What was the purpose of free speech? How did the liberty to write and read relate to ideas about personal autonomy? What effects do words have on those who read or hear them? Working with previously untapped archival material on regulating obscene publications and the passage of legislation against racial vilification, the project aims to provide a new history of the theory and practice of freedom of expression in modern Britain.Read moreRead less
Augustus and the Roman Triumph: A Study in Creeping Authoritarianism. This proposal aims to produce novel comparative insights into the genesis of despotism in sophisticated republics and democracies. To this end, it focuses on the transformation of the public victory ritual of the triumph from a shared aristocratic privilege into a lasting imperial monopoly by Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. Enhancing our knowledge of the rise and inner workings of Augustus’ New Order will provide modern politi ....Augustus and the Roman Triumph: A Study in Creeping Authoritarianism. This proposal aims to produce novel comparative insights into the genesis of despotism in sophisticated republics and democracies. To this end, it focuses on the transformation of the public victory ritual of the triumph from a shared aristocratic privilege into a lasting imperial monopoly by Augustus, Rome’s first emperor. Enhancing our knowledge of the rise and inner workings of Augustus’ New Order will provide modern political science with a new archetype of creeping authoritarianism, readily applicable to some of the most notorious tyrannies of the modern era and contemporary variants. The proposal will, therefore, substantially inform the field, theorists and practitioners of government, and Australia’s secondary school curriculum.Read moreRead less
The Rise of Decline in the Later Roman Empire. This project aims to examine the evidence for the decline of the Western Roman Empire. For over two centuries, historians have debated whether the Western Roman Empire was in decline prior to its political disintegration in the 5th century AD. This project takes a new approach by rejecting the notion that Late Roman decline can be empirically quantified. Instead, through the examination of historical, administrative, religious and literary texts it ....The Rise of Decline in the Later Roman Empire. This project aims to examine the evidence for the decline of the Western Roman Empire. For over two centuries, historians have debated whether the Western Roman Empire was in decline prior to its political disintegration in the 5th century AD. This project takes a new approach by rejecting the notion that Late Roman decline can be empirically quantified. Instead, through the examination of historical, administrative, religious and literary texts it will explore why the Late Roman elite often chose to present their own period as an age of decline. This project aims to test the hypothesis that references to economic, political and moral decline were often the result of fissures within Late Roman society prompted by radical structural reorganisation by a centralising imperial government and a newly empowered Christian Church.Read moreRead less
Poetry of the Nordic past: a new analysis and interpretation. In the Middle Ages, Icelandic poets composed verses they imagined were spoken by heroes of the past and these poems were inserted into prose sagas about prehistoric times. This project will make a literary study of this poetry, which will be published as a book about the medieval Icelandic legendary past.
Shipwrecks of the Roaring Forties: a maritime archaeological reassessment of some of Australia's earliest shipwrecks. This project will evaluate new ways of investigating the history of Europeans in the Indian Ocean by using the latest technology to evaluate seven Western Australian shipwrecks excavated over 40 years ago. The project will work with emerging technologies to study these significant sites and collections.
William Blake in the 21st century: poetry, prophecy, the history of imagination, and the futures of romanticism. William Blake, one of the most important Romantic artists, provides an exemplary instance of the creative and iconoclastic. By recovering Blake's dialogue with London's prophetic subcultures, this project offers an original account of his oeuvre, the cultural resources that enabled his originality, and the role played by creativity in modernity.
Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Poems (1820) as a unified volume. The primary aim of this proposal is to research and publish the first sustained critical study of John Keats's important collection of poems, 'Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems' (1820). Considered as a volume in its own right, the collection exhibits principles of thematic and aesthetic unity as yet unnoticed. Whereas other books on Keats's poetry invariably deal with individual poems in the chronological order ....Keats's Anatomy of Melancholy: Poems (1820) as a unified volume. The primary aim of this proposal is to research and publish the first sustained critical study of John Keats's important collection of poems, 'Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, And Other Poems' (1820). Considered as a volume in its own right, the collection exhibits principles of thematic and aesthetic unity as yet unnoticed. Whereas other books on Keats's poetry invariably deal with individual poems in the chronological order of their composition, this project aims to focus on Keats's shaping of the contents into a considered structure, grounded in themes that create a unified whole and provide a new context for the individual poems.Read moreRead less