Category Archives: 20th century history

Second Call for Papers – Perspectives on Progress

02 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in 18th century history, 19th century history, 20th century history, 21st century history, Academia, Ancient Religion, Anthropology, Art & Art History, Classical history, Economics, History, Humanties, Linguistics, Literature, Personal, Post-classical history, Renaissance history, Social Sciences

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Along with a small cadre of my fellow research postgraduates at the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at The University of Queensland, I’m involved in organising a conference, Perspectives on Progress, which will be held in November 2013.

This is our second call for papers. The abstracts are due 31 May 2013. If you can, please consider submitting an abstract. More information about the conference can be seen at our website – http://perspectives2013.org/, but the basic information is reproduced below.

Perspectives on Progress – An interdisciplinary postgraduate and early career researcher conference, at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. November 27-29, 2013.

The organising committee is pleased announce that Dr. Alastair Blanshard and Dr. Sarah Pinto have each agreed to deliver Key Note Addresses at Perspectives on Progress, 2013.

Dr. Blanshard is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. His most recent monograph is Sex, Vice, and Love from Antiquity to Modernity (Wiley Blackwell, 2010). In addition to his work on ancient sexuality, Dr. Blanshard is also concerned with examining the role that the classical past plays in the history of ideas.

Dr. Mills’s Futures of Reproduction: Bioethics and Biopolitics (Springer, 2011) is a compelling interrogation of the myriad bioethical issues associated with liberal eugenics and selective reproduction. As the recipient of a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship, Dr. Mills is currently working on a project concerned with exploring the concept of responsibility as it pertains to issues in reproductive and maternal-foetal medicine.

Call for Papers

In 1968, historian Sidney Pollard defined the Victorian ideal of ‘progress’ as, “the assumption that a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind… that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement.” Despite the increasingly problematic nature of this ideal, the ‘progress myth’ still remains pervasive in the Western cultural tradition.

This postgraduate and early career researcher conference seeks to promote innovative interdisciplinary dialogues interrogating the concept of progress by bringing together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences.

Contributions are invited from disciplines ranging from history, classics, religion and philosophy through literary, media and cultural studies to anthropology, psychology and political science. Conference delegates will be invited to consider how the idea of progress influences their own work, while being given the opportunity to explore how this intersects with scholarship in other disciplines.

The conference committee invites proposals for papers in the form of an abstract of between 250 and 300 words to perspectivesonprogress2013@gmail.com by 31 May 2013. Paper format is a 20 minute paper with a 10 minute period for questions and answers.

CFP: Olympic Athletes: Ancient and Modern

08 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by in 20th century history, 21st century history, Ancient Religion, Greek Classics, Greek history, Post-classical history, Reception

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School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics
University of Queensland, Australia

A Conference on Olympic Athletes: Ancient and Modern
Date: (Friday-Sunday) 6-8 July 2012
Place: University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD. Australia. 4072.

Call for Papers

Papers are invited for a conference on ‘Olympic Athletes: Ancient and Modern’, which will be held at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Australia, from 6-8 July 2012.

The theme can be interpreted fairly broadly, but there is a particular desire to assemble papers which analyse the Olympic experience of athletes from the ancient and the modern games. What was / is special about Olympic competition and Olympic athletes? Who were / are the great Olympic athletes? Why?

All speaking slots will be 30 minutes in duration (20 for paper, 10 for questions). Please send offers of papers, plus a 100-word abstract, to the organizers by Friday 1 June 2012.

Further details will be available soon at http://www.uq.edu.au/hprc. In the meantime, anyone who would like to offer a paper or attend the conference should contact Tom Stevenson (t.stevenson@uq.edu.au) for the organizers.

On Christopher Hitchens

20 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in 20th century history, 21st century history, News Items, Personal

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WARNING: POLITICS AND RELIGION

There has been a lot of virtual ink spilt over the few days about Christopher Hitchens’ death. Much mourning of this supposed great warrior for atheist reason. However, much of that overlooks his articulation of a disgusting, triumphant, political ideology – namely, his obscene cheering for the Iraq war and his absolute support for the Bush/Cheney criminal gang, and the implications that his atheism has within the particularly repulsive world view that he held.

I thought Guy Rundle in Crikey put it best when he linked the atheist book (of “sociological interest” at best) to Hitchens’ support for the ultra-right-wing project of ever-escalating genocide against the bogey man of “Islamofascism”. Any level of body count was justified in Hitchens’ reasoning. The fact that the “post political” crowd cheered on his atheist ranting while completely ignoring the human and social implications of his actual political ideology shows up the paucity of depth in the approach of that particular project. At the mourning of him from that sector has deeply alienated me from their project. My atheism is simply not the central core of my political ideology. I’m not siding with fascism and fascists, especially lapsed Trotskites, just because some of them might be atheists! Like the hard Catholic Right of the ALP or the Protestant loonies of the conservative factions, Hitch shows that to make the issue of religion (for or against) a core part of one’s political articulation leads to the worst possible political ideologies.

Update: Glenn Greenwald making eminent sense on Hitchens.

How Gaddafi toppled a Roman emperor

29 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in 20th century history, 21st century history, Archaeology, Reception, Roman history

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How Gaddafi toppled a Roman emperor | Culture | guardian.co.uk:

For years, said Walda, an antique bronze statue of the emperor had stood in Green Square, now Martyrs’ Square. “It witnessed all the major events there from the era of the kings, to the Italian period, to the Gaddafi period,” he said. In the late 1970s, as things got tougher under the dictator, the statue started to get used as a way of cloaking and depersonalising subversion. “Septimius Severus became the mouthpiece for opposition,” explained Walda. “People would ask each other, ‘What’s Septimius Severus saying today? So Gaddafi decided to topple him.” The statue was duly removed from Green Square.

(Via The Guardian.)

Libya’s historic treasures, unscathed

07 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in 20th century history, 21st century history, Archaeology, Roman history

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Another article about antiquities in Libya and how relatively unscathed they were, this one from the BBC. Interesting bit at the end, about the vandalism of Gaddafi-themed exhibits in the museum, as the dead tyrant now undergoes damnatio memoriae.

BBC News – Libya’s historic treasures survive the revolution:

One day, in the not too distant future, visitors may flock to see the giant white marble statues of the Roman emperors, Claudius and Augustus, that grace Tripoli’s National Museum. Today the galleries that house them, and the ornate mosaics from the vast Roman site of Leptis Magna 120 km (75 miles) east of Tripoli, are completely deserted.
Outside the museum, at the edge of Martyr’s Square, a stall sells revolutionary souvenirs – necklaces and wristbands in the black, red and green of the new Libya. But the arched wooden door to the museum, now festooned with graffiti proclaiming Libya “free”, is firmly shut. “We don’t feel it’s safe enough yet to re-open,” says Mustafa Turjman, head of research at the national department of archaeology, as he shows me around. “We prefer to be patient rather than to open early and expose our precious things to any risk. We are not sure if our borders are safe and professional criminals could take advantage of this instability,” he says.