New Fellows for 2012

Twenty-two leading scholars have been elected in 2012 as Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, one of the highest honours available for achievement in the humanities in Australia.

We congratulate the following new Fellows:

Warwick Anderson

Warwick Anderson is ARC Laureate Fellow and Professor in the Department of History and the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine at The University of Sydney. He also has an affiliation with the Unit for History and Philosophy of Science at The University of Sydney and is a Professorial Fellow of the School of Population Health at The University of Melbourne. Trained in medicine (Melbourne) and the history and sociology of science (Melbourne, Pennsylvania), he is internationally renowned for his work at the intersection of medicine, culture and society in the colonial and postcolonial worlds of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has written extensively on ideas about race, human difference, and citizenship in this period; on postcolonial science studies and, more generally, on science and globalisation. His three single-author books published during the past decade have been awarded numerous prizes.

His publications include The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen (2008); Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines (2006); and The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (2002).

Susan Broomhall

Susan Broomhall is Winthrop Professor of History in the School of Humanities at The University of Western Australia. She has achieved widespread international recognition for her innovative scholarship in the field of women and gender in early modern France and the Low Countries. Her books on women in the book trade, in medical knowledge and practice, in religion, and in historiography, heritage and tourism brought a feminist analysis to these cultural innovations of the sixteenth century. More recently her work has expanded to include fields such as families and households, poverty and social welfare, policing and work.

Her publications include Early Modern Women in the Low Countries: Feminising Sources and Interpretations of the Past (2011, with Jennifer Spinks); Emotions in the Household, 1200-1900 (2007, editor); Women and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France (2005); Women’s Medical Work in Early Modern France (2004); and Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France (2002).

Hilary Carey

Hilary Carey is Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. She is a distinguished historian of religion and society who has achieved international recognition in both medieval and modern history. After focusing in her first two books on the social history of religious identity and institutions in Australia, especially in the history of Catholicism, her subsequent publishing has ranged widely over the historical significance of belief and practice in the different worlds of medieval England and colonial and postcolonial Australia. Professor Carey also continues to make a major contribution to studies of Indigenous cultures and belief systems during the colonial era through painstaking and imaginative work on the linguistic records of colonial missionaries.

Her publications include Church and State in Old and New Worlds (2011, with John Gascoigne FAHA); God's Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, c.1801–1908 (2011); Empires of Religion (2008, editor); and Courting Disaster (1992).

Jean Fornasiero

Jean Fornasiero is Professor of French Studies and Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. Her principal field of research is the literary and cultural history of nineteenth-century France, particularly in relation to utopian thought and practice and to forms of intellectual commitment. She has published on the works of the Romantic poet Gérard de Nerval, and on writers including Balzac, Ballanche, Eugène Sue, Jules Verne, Emile Zola and members of the Fourierist movement. She has also published widely on the French scientific voyage to Australia 1800-04, led by Captain Nicolas Baudin.

Her publications include Explorations and Encounters in French (2010, co-edited with Colette Mrowa-Hopkins); Encountering Terra Australis: The Australian Voyages of Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders, 1800-1803 (2004, with Peter Monteath and John West-Sooby); and 'The Baudin Expedition 1800-1804: Texts, Contexts and Subtexts', special number of Australian Journal of French Studies, XLI, 2, 2004 (co-edited with Margaret Sankey FAHA and Peter Cowley).

Paul Giles

Paul Giles, Challis Professor of English at The University of Sydney, is recognised as a major figure in transnational literary criticism with specific reference to the US, Britain and now Australia. He has produced a formidable body of scholarly work since the mid-1980s, beginning with a study of Hart Crane (1986), followed by American Catholic Arts and Fictions (1992), which explored the role of Catholicism in literature and film as a counterweight to the dominance of Protestantism in the US cultural imaginary. Three major interrelated monographs, appearing in the 2000s, established Giles’s reputation in the forefront of transatlantic studies: Transatlantic Insurrections (2001), Virtual Americas (2002), and Atlantic Republic (2006).

His other publications include The Global Remapping of American Literature (2010); and Transnationalism in Practice: Essays on American Studies, Literature and Religion (2010).

Gay Hawkins

Gay Hawkins is a Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at The University of Queensland. She has played a key role in the development of Australian cultural studies as an interdisciplinary and philosophically informed practice of social reflection. In her first book, From Nimbin to Mardi Gras: Constructing Community Arts (1993), she undertook the first analysis of Australian community arts, and thereby made a substantial and original contribution to cultural policy. Her next two books, Culture and Waste (edited with Stephen Muecke, 2002) and The Ethics of Waste (2006), broke new ground in their exploration of the cultural and ethical significance of waste in all its manifestations and contributed to the formulation of a culturally informed environmental politics.

Her other publications include The SBS Story: The Challenge of Cultural Diversity (2008, with Ien Ang FAHA and Lamia Dabboussy).

Daniel Kane

Daniel Kane is Head of Chinese Studies at Macquarie University and has successfully combined a diplomatic and an academic career both in the service of the Commonwealth of Australia. Professor Kane is a highly respected senior Sinologist and his research covers three different linguistic areas, Chinese, Jurchen and Kitan, making him one of Australia’s leading research scholars in China’s relations with its northern neighbours in the pre-Modern era. As a Cultural Counsellor attached to the Australian Embassy in Beijing, he fostered important cultural ties and personal links between Australian and Chinese scholars and also gave invaluable support to Australian scholars conducting research in China. His first monograph (1989) instantly became the standard work on the subject of Sino-Jurchen official vocabulary. His 2009 publication, The Kitan Language and Script,represents a major attempt to consolidate the decipherment of the Kitan language.

His publications include The Kitan Language and Script (2009); The Chinese Language, its History and Current Usage (2006; Czech translation, 2009); Journey to the West: The Monkey King’s Amazing Adventures (2008, editor); and The Sino-Jurchen Vocabulary of the Bureau of Interpreters (1989).

Veronica Kelly

Veronica Kelly’s research concentrates on Australian and international theatre history and historiography of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Kelly is a world expert on the writer Louis Nowra and has published internationally on numerous other contemporary Australian authors. Since 1998 her main interest has been in theorising the intersection of discourses of class, gender, imperial and ‘Australian’ identifications, both through theatre as an industry and as modelled by popular theatrical stars. An invaluable contribution to the scholarship of Australian theatre and drama is Kelly’s founding and editorship in 1982 (with Richard Fotheringham FAHA) of the journal Australasian Drama Studies. Professor Kelly’s current research activities include the AusStage database, a unique resource for researchers.

Her publications include The Empire Actors: Stars of Australasian Costume Drama 1890s-1920s (2010); Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s (2008, with Robert Dixon FAHA); The Theatre of Louis Nowra (1998); Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s (1998); and Australia Felix (1988).

Andrew McNamara

Andrew McNamara is Professor of Art History at Queensland University of Technology and also Head of Discipline. Professor McNamara is internationally regarded for his cross-disciplinary approaches to inform new perspectives on art history and critical theory, with work appearing in volumes dedicated to new media studies, psychoanalysis, literary studies, political and critical theory, as well as Indigenous studies. He has made outstanding original contributions to the debates on Australian modernism.

His publications include Sweat: The Subtropical Imaginary (2011, editor); An Apprehensive Aesthetic: The Legacy of Modernist Culture (2009); Modern Times: The Unwritten History of Modernism in Australia (2008, with Ann Stephen FAHA and Philip Goad FAHA); and Modernism and Australia: Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (2006, with Ann Stephen FAHA and Philip Goad FAHA).

Philip Mead

Philip Mead is Winthrop Professor and inaugural Chair of Australian Literature at The University of Western Australia. Professor Mead researches in several interconnected fields, including the history, criticism and pedagogy of Australian literature; poetry and poetics; literary regionalism; Shakespeare’s reception in Australia; and new developments in digital humanities. The Penguin Book of Modern Australian Poetry (1991), which he co-edited with poet John Tranter FAHA, had an international impact in shaping the accepted canon of Australian poetry. His book Networked Language: History & Culture in Australian Poetry (2009) was issued in a second edition in 2010 after winning the NSW Premier’s Award for Literary Scholarship. His poetry and other creative works have appeared in journals and periodicals including the Adelaide Review, the Age Monthly Review, Australian Book Review, and Meanjin.

His publications include Teaching Australian Literature: From Classroom Conversations to National Imaginings (2011, editor with Brenton Doecke and Larissa McLean Davies); Networked Language: Culture & History in Australian Poetry (2009, 2nd ed. 2010); and Shakespeare’s Books (1993).

Peter Morgan

Peter Morgan is Director of the European Studies programme at The University of Sydney. Professor Morgan has written and published widely in the discipline of German studies as well as in comparative literary studies; socio-historical, political and cultural studies; and the pedagogy of European Studies. He is a leading scholar in European Studies, and has been at the forefront of disciplinary developments in the field, both nationally and internationally. His research focuses on questions about German national identity, specifically the post-1945 attempts to deal with the Nazi past, and post-1990 explorations of recent German history by writers such as Günter Grass and W. G. Sebald. In 2003 he received an ARC Large Grant to complete a critical study and biography of the Albanian writer and dissident, Ismail Kadare, and Professor Morgan was instrumental in introducing the International Man Booker Prize winner (2005) to a global audience.

His publications include Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship, 1957-1990 (2010, translated into Albanian 2011); and The Critical Idyll: Traditional Values and the French Revolution in Goethe’s ‘Hermann und Dorothea’ (1990).

Bronwen Neil

Bronwen Neil is the Burke Senior Lecturer in Ecclesiastical Latin at Australian Catholic University, Brisbane. Dr Neil is an internationally recognised authority on the fifth-century pope, Leo I of Rome, Gregory the Great, Maximus the Confessor and Anastasius the Librarian. Her publications have a wide chronological spread, from the fourth to the tenth centuries, and cover a variety of disciplines including translations from Greek and Latin, exegesis, history, hagiography, philosophy and liturgy. She has served on the executives of the Australian Society for Classical Studies, the Australian Early Medieval Association, and as Treasurer and current President of the Australian Association for Byzantine Studies.

Her publications include Leo the Great, The Early Church Fathers (2009); Seventh Century Popes and Martyrs: The Political Hagiography of Anastasius Bibliothecarius (2006); The Life of Maximus the Confessor – Recension 3 (2003, co-edited with Pauline Allen FAHA); and Scripto Saeculi VII Vitam Maximl Confessoris Illustrantia (1999, co-edited with Pauline Allen FAHA).

Samantha Owens

Samantha Owens is a senior lecturer in Music at The University of Queensland. Dr Owens researches in the field of Baroque music, contributing to present day understandings of the performance practices, personnel, the confessional influences, and the artistic preferences of patrons upon music heard at German courts. She has also been one of the first writers in English to provide published information on music in the largely neglected German genre of the Singballett. In addition to holding an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Dr Owens has been awarded fellowships at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel and at Clare Hall, the University of Cambridge, to which she was elected a Life Member. Dr Owens is currently an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

Her publications include Music at German Courts, 1715-1760: Changing Artistic Priorities (2011, co-edited with Barbara M. Reul and Janice B. Stockigt FAHA); and Johann Sigismund Kusser, Adonis (2009).

Pamela Hardy Peters

Pam Peters is Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University, having previously held a Personal Chair in Linguistics at that institution. Emeritus Professor Peters is recognised both nationally and internationally as a leading authority on the usage of English around the world, and her various Cambridge guides of the major varieties of English are landmark publications, unsurpassed by any other usage guides. She has been a member of the Editorial Committee of the Macquarie Dictionary (1986-2006), and editor of Australian Style: A National Bulletin on English in Australia (1992-2008). She continues to serve on editorial boards of several major international journals and to hold many distinguished professorial roles.

Her publications include Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (2007); The Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2005); The Word on Words (2005); and Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (1996).

Penelope Ann Russell

Penny Russell is Associate Professor in History at The University of Sydney. Her research focuses on Australian colonial history, examining the ‘small talk’ of history in Australia and England, and exploring the issues of gender and class, race and colonisation within private writing and social encounters. These interests intersect in her research on the history of manners in Australia and in her writing on Lady Jane Franklin, whose bid to rescue her missing Arctic explorer husband Sir John Franklin in the mid-nineteenth century made her an important figure in British imperial history. Associate Professor Russell won the NSW Premier’s History Award for Australian History in 2010 for her book, Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia. Her commitment to research supervision has been acknowledged by both a SUPRA ‘Supervisor of the Year’ award and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Higher Research Degree Supervision.

Her publications include Australia’s History: Themes and Debates (2005, co-edited with Martyn Lyons FAHA); This Errant Lady: Jane Franklin's Overland Journey to Port Phillip and Sydney (2002); For Richer, For Poorer: Early Colonial Marriages (1994); and A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity (1994).

John Yue-wo Wong

John Wong is Professor of Modern History at The University of Sydney and is nationally and internationally regarded for his scholarship in two areas: the history of Anglo-Chinese relation in the nineteenth century, with particular reference to the causes of the Second Opium War; and the life and political beliefs of Sun Yatsen. In 1998 he published Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the ‘Arrow’ War (1856-1860) in China and has also published several books in Mandarin on the subject of Sun Yatsen. Professor Wong has held visiting scholarship positions at the University of Cambridge, Stanford University and the University of Hawaii. He was elected as a fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2000, and to the Royal Historical Society (Britain) in 1978.

His publications include London and the Chinese Revolution: Exploring the London Origins of Sun Yatsen's Three Principles, 1896-1897 (2007); Sun Yatsen and the British, 1883-1925 (2005); The Truth about Sun Yatsen’s Kidnapping in London (1998); and Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the ‘Arrow’ War (1856-60) in China (1998).

New Honorary Fellows

The Academy is also delighted to announce the election of 6 new Honorary Fellows. Honorary Fellows are distinguished public figures who advocate for the humanities, practitioners of the arts, overseas scholars in the humanities who have a close association with Australia, or Australian-based scholars who have made substantial contributions to the humanities throughout their careers.

The 2012 Honorary Fellows are:

Harry Rodger Allen

Harry Allen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Auckland where he has taught archaeology since 1973. His teaching and research ranges from the history and archaeology of northern Australia and New Zealand to heritage conservation. Since 1986 he has collaborated in archaeological investigations in the Pacitan Region of East Java in Indonesia as part of a team led by Professor Mike Morwood FAHA. Associate Professor Allen’s most recent research has focused on William Blandowski, whose major scientific expedition to the Murray River in 1856-57 produced unique collections of zoological specimen and cultural artefacts, as well as descriptions, sketches and photographs of natural history and Aboriginal life.

His publications include Australia: William Blandowski’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aboriginal Australia (2010); Bridging the Divide: Indigenous Communities and Archaeology into the 21st Century (2010, co-edited with Caroline Phillips); and Protecting Historic Places in New Zealand: Research in Anthropology and Linguistics (1998).

David Konstan

David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. He has made major contributions to both Greek and Latin studies, focusing on Roman comedy, the ancient novel and classical philosophy. He has also published major works in different disciplines, including ancient philosophy, ancient literature and the history of the emotions. Professor Konstan has held visiting appointments in New Zealand, Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Australia, and Egypt. He has been President of the American Philological Association, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently working on a book on the ancient Greek conception of beauty, and on a verse translation of the two Senecan tragedies about Hercules. Professor Konstan has had close and enduring ties to Australia since the late 1980s, as Visiting Professor or visiting lecturer at a range of Australian institutions, as a joint collaborator with Australian researchers in various publications and conferences.

His publications include Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea (2010); ‘A Life Worthy of the Gods’: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus (2008); The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (2006); and Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genres (1994).

William G. Lycan

William Lycan is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at University of North Carolina. He is among the most prolific and influential philosophers writing on metaphysics, philosophy of the mind and philosophy of language. Professor Lycan’s approach to many of these issues is consonant with the broad tradition of Australian metaphysics, and he is a powerful advocate for the general approach to philosophical problem solving associated with many Australian philosophers. Professor Lycan is a regular visitor to Australia, and has been a visiting lecturer and research fellow at The University of Sydney and The Australian National University.

His publications include Real Conditionals (2001); Consciousness and Experience (1996); Judgement and Justification (1988); and Consciousness (1987).

Patrick McCaughey

Patrick McCaughey is an eminent art historian, who in 1972 became Foundation Professor of Visual Arts at Monash University and established the first department to specialise in contemporary art in Australia. In 1980, he published the classic monograph on the work of Fred Williams, two years before the artist died. In 1981 Professor McCaughey was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Victoria. In 1990 he returned to America as the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University, shortly after which he was appointed Director of the Wadsworth Athenaeum Gallery in Hertford, Connecticut. Subsequently he became Director of the Yale Centre for British Art. In 2009 and 2011 Professor McCaughey returned to The University of Melbourne to be Director of the Festival of Ideas.

His publications include Bert & Ned: The Correspondence of Albert Tucker and Sidney Nolan (2006); Voyage and Landfall: The Art of Jan Senbergs (2006); The Bright Shapes and the True Names: A Memoir (2003); and Fred Williams: The Pilbara Series (1987).

Kim Scott

Kim Scott is Professor of Writing in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts at Curtin University. He is the first Indigenous writer to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000, for his novel Benang. He was awarded his second Miles Franklin Award in 2011 for the novel That Deadman Dance. Professor Scott’s literary work expresses his interpretations of the contemporary and historical experiences of his people, the Noongar of the southwest of Western Australia. His commitment to the survival and flourishing of Noongar cultural life has driven his involvement in and leadership of diverse, and important academic and community projects in the humanities and health science faculties at Curtin University. Professor Scott was named Inaugural Western Australian of the Year in June 2012.

His publications include Indigenous Australian Health and Cultures: An Introduction for Health Professionals (2010, co-edited with Rosalie Thackrah); That Dead Man Dance (2010); Kayang and Me (2005); Benang (1999); and True Country (1993).

Terri-ann White

Terri-ann White has been the Director of UWA Publishing since 2006. In 1999, Professor White was the inaugural Director of the interdisciplinary Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia, a post she combined with her role as Director of UWA Publishing until 2011. She has made an outstanding contribution to contemporary Australian society and the humanities, and has pioneered connections with international organisations, such as the Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes. Professor White is a proponent of major collaborative research projects (funded locally and nationally), and a highly valued member of numerous state and national advisory, literary and editorial boards and committees. She is also a significant Australian author of creative writings, including a novel, a collection of short stories, a collaborative book, edited books of poetry, biography and non-fiction.

Her publications include Future Imaginings: Sexualities and Genders in the New Millennium (2003, co-edited with Delys Bird and Wendy Were); Speed Factory (2002, a book of collaborative writings with McKenzie Wark, John Kinsella, and Bernard Cohen); Memory Writing (2002); and Finding Theodore and Brina (2001).