Grants awarded 2006
The Circulation of Nonviolence: Gandhi and the History of Global Politics
Researcher: Dr Sean Scalmer
ARC Discovery Grant
Global protest movements have become a feature of recent campaigns against war and corporate power. The diffusion of protest across national boundaries disrupts official routine, threatens state power, and raises new questions about global citizenship. However, the history, dynamics and novelty of transnational diffusion is still only dimly understood. This project will address such absences. It focuses on the circulation of Gandhian non-violence, and it offers the first comparative, long-term study of the diffusion of collective action. This will greatly enhance our understanding of the processes currently reshaping politics and society and should enrich the practice of contemporary democratic participation.
Consumption in Late Imperial China: an Early Modern Phenomenon?
Researcher: Assoc Prof Antonia Finnane
ARC Discovery Grant
China's present economic growth and consumer activity are of immediate interest to Australia. This study of consumer activities in earlier centuries will shed light on changes as well as continuities in Chinese consumption in a long era of globalization. The project will contribute to the corpus of Australian scholarship on Chinese and world history, enhancing local and global understandings of China's past, and enriching ways in which it is imagined.
Elocution Lessons: A History of Elocution, Speech and the Auditory Self in Australian Cultural Life
Researcher: Prof Joy Damousi
ARC Discovery Grant
Through a history of elocution this project explores the significance of the auditory in Australian culture. During the nineteenth and twentieth cenuries, elocution became a marker of class, gender and race reflecte the importance of listening to voice in shaping subjectivity. By connecting elocution to the listening self, the significance of this project lies in the argument that the reception of speech is one of the key, yet overlooked aspects of how identity has been shaped. The outcome will be a new cultural history of listening which uses elocution to explore the importance of the auditory in cultural life.
A History of Public Conversation in the USA
Researcher: Dr David Goodman
ARC Discovery Grant
The quality of public conversation is a subject of continuing concern in Australia as in the US. This study of the history of public conversation in the US will offer a longer historical perspective on current political and social concerns about declining social capital and civility in public discourse. Americans have always sought more and better public discussion, but for quite different reasons at different times. The research will illuminate the very rich history of public conversation in the US and shed some comparative light on Australian conditions.
Islam and the Politics of Memory in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia
Researcher: Dr Kate McGregor
ARC Discovery Grant
Melbourne Research Grant
Since the fall of Suharto in 1998, Indonesians have critically re-examined episodes of past violence. In this project I will analyse contemporary memories of the 1965 anti-communist killings in which Muslims participated and the 1984 Tanjung Priok killings in which Muslims were massacred. This study will reveal how and why different groups within Indonesia have understood, confronted or defended their roles as perpetrators, victims or advocates of past violence. The resultant publications will significantly extend understanding of the politics of memories of traumatic events across the globe and unravel specific sources of ideas of Islamic victimhood and identity.
Layers of meaning: Historical studies in central Victoria's regional heritage 1834-1950
Researchers: Dr Keir Reeves, A/Prof Alan Mayne, Mr DP Bannear
ARC Linkage Grant
This project will provide a deeper understanding of a region that is central to understanding Australian history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will also the strengthen the social fabric of regional communities as local inhabitants will be better able to identify with their region, in the process providing them with a sense of place within their community. There will also be economic benefits including the development of infrastructure and increased employment opportunities that will flow from the development of a cultural tourism plan. This will provide an integrated strategy for interpreting and promoting central Victoria at internatioanl, national, state, regional and local levels.
The Living Dead: Witchcraft and apparition in European culture (3rd to 18th century)
Researcher: Prof Charles Zika
ARC Discovery Grant
By providing a major monograph, an edited collection of papers by national and international scholars, and an electronic pictorial catalogue, the project will be of immense benefit to this rich new field of international research, and also help maintain the high reputation Australian scholarship enjoys in the field of medieval and early modern studies. But the relationship of societies to their dead continues to evoke keen interest in contemporary Australia outside the bounds of the academy. A fully researched history of Europe's changing views towards the dead will contribute to this topical discussion, made more urgent by our aging population and changes to traditional religious and cultural responses to death.