Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE220101505
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$363,582.00
Summary
The Aristotelian Soul in Late Ming China. This project aims to uncover a seminal moment during the first stage of Sino-Western intellectual encounters when the Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) collaborated with the mandarin Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) on the Lingyan lishao (1624), a Chinese translation of Aristotle’s On the Soul. Since Ming Chinese lacked direct analogues for the Aristotelian soul, this work provides significant insights into how conceptual translation is conducted between dispa ....The Aristotelian Soul in Late Ming China. This project aims to uncover a seminal moment during the first stage of Sino-Western intellectual encounters when the Jesuit Francesco Sambiasi (1582-1649) collaborated with the mandarin Xu Guangqi (1562-1633) on the Lingyan lishao (1624), a Chinese translation of Aristotle’s On the Soul. Since Ming Chinese lacked direct analogues for the Aristotelian soul, this work provides significant insights into how conceptual translation is conducted between disparate cultures. The intended outcome of this project is to reveal the semantic transformations between the European and Chinese contexts. Benefits include the opening up of pioneering yet understudied texts and insights into why certain ideas fail to resonate in their new target culture.Read moreRead less
Precarious Borders: The Nation-State and the Arab Diaspora Novel. This project aims to shed new light on diaspora voices in debates about the formation and narration of nations to argue for a more inclusive view of the nation and to challenge the dominance of canonical literature in these debates. Arab writing is closely tied to its diaspora, making it particularly significant for probing how fiction registers the transformative effects of migration on our grasp of the nation. Spanning four dias ....Precarious Borders: The Nation-State and the Arab Diaspora Novel. This project aims to shed new light on diaspora voices in debates about the formation and narration of nations to argue for a more inclusive view of the nation and to challenge the dominance of canonical literature in these debates. Arab writing is closely tied to its diaspora, making it particularly significant for probing how fiction registers the transformative effects of migration on our grasp of the nation. Spanning four diaspora sites and a century of writing, potential outcomes include a diaspora-focused approach to reassess the nation from a transnational perspective, a new awareness of the value of diaspora writers’ engagement with the nation, and the vital repositioning of Arab-Australian writing in this field of world literature.Read moreRead less
Document loss in pre-modern Europe. This project aims to map out the social and cultural effects of paper’s introduction to Europe from 1200-1800. After centuries of writing on parchment, Europeans began to use paper in the late Middle Ages. Paper proved both a gift and a curse to Europeans. Important documents could easily be destroyed or lost. This project will investigate loss as a cultural problem in history. It will trace both unintentional losses (fires, rot, vermin) and intentional ones ( ....Document loss in pre-modern Europe. This project aims to map out the social and cultural effects of paper’s introduction to Europe from 1200-1800. After centuries of writing on parchment, Europeans began to use paper in the late Middle Ages. Paper proved both a gift and a curse to Europeans. Important documents could easily be destroyed or lost. This project will investigate loss as a cultural problem in history. It will trace both unintentional losses (fires, rot, vermin) and intentional ones (censorship, document suppression, prohibitions). The project expects to uncover how obliteration led to both opened repression and blank-slate reinvention, a powerful form of cultural creativity.Read moreRead less
KGB Empire: State Security Archives in the former Eastern Bloc. A generation has passed since the fall of Soviet communism, and yet our knowledge about the functioning of the institution at the heart of that system—the chekist state security apparatus—remains highly fragmentary and incomplete. This project will shed light on its history and ongoing legacy through a comparative study of state security archives across a range of East European countries. The project has a double focus, comprising h ....KGB Empire: State Security Archives in the former Eastern Bloc. A generation has passed since the fall of Soviet communism, and yet our knowledge about the functioning of the institution at the heart of that system—the chekist state security apparatus—remains highly fragmentary and incomplete. This project will shed light on its history and ongoing legacy through a comparative study of state security archives across a range of East European countries. The project has a double focus, comprising historical work in the archives—using archival documents to advance our understanding of how the security apparatus operated during the late socialist period; and historical work on the archives—investigating how these archives are being used and misused in the region today.Read moreRead less
Artisan mobility, innovation and the eighteenth-century Republic of Things. This project aims to examine how movement across borders in eighteenth-century Europe and encounters between artisans from different backgrounds promoted technical innovation in the cities. Mobility to and from Paris suggests that the cosmopolitan city’s society and culture were as important as markets and institutions. The project will study male and female artisans, producers of manufactured goods in the eighteenth cen ....Artisan mobility, innovation and the eighteenth-century Republic of Things. This project aims to examine how movement across borders in eighteenth-century Europe and encounters between artisans from different backgrounds promoted technical innovation in the cities. Mobility to and from Paris suggests that the cosmopolitan city’s society and culture were as important as markets and institutions. The project will study male and female artisans, producers of manufactured goods in the eighteenth century, who played a vital but largely forgotten role in transferring applied knowledge between European centres. This project aims to provide a historical grounding for debates on links between cosmopolitanism, culture, and technical innovation in a globalising world.Read moreRead less
Protest and Terror: Political Violence in Western Europe after 1968. This project aims to explore how the protest era of the 1960s in Western Europe transformed into a decade of political violence and terror in the 1970s. By undertaking an unprecedented transnational analysis of the history of political violence in France, Italy and West Germany after 1968, the project intends to generate a new understanding of the origins of home-grown terrorism in Europe and the precariousness of democratic st ....Protest and Terror: Political Violence in Western Europe after 1968. This project aims to explore how the protest era of the 1960s in Western Europe transformed into a decade of political violence and terror in the 1970s. By undertaking an unprecedented transnational analysis of the history of political violence in France, Italy and West Germany after 1968, the project intends to generate a new understanding of the origins of home-grown terrorism in Europe and the precariousness of democratic stability. The project aims to place the rise and fall of political terror in a new perspective, via an analysis of a wide variety of forms of violence by individuals, political groups, social movements and states, with significant benefits to understanding similar challenges in the contemporary world.Read moreRead less
A History of Early Modern Natural Resource Management. This project aims to analyse how early modern Europeans managed two key assets, water and forests. It expects to generate detailed knowledge of their practices and mindsets that still shape present responses to environmental challenges. It will use an innovative cultural history approach to identify and compare evidence drawn from legal, economic, scientific, literary and artistic sources. Expected outcomes include broadening how we think ab ....A History of Early Modern Natural Resource Management. This project aims to analyse how early modern Europeans managed two key assets, water and forests. It expects to generate detailed knowledge of their practices and mindsets that still shape present responses to environmental challenges. It will use an innovative cultural history approach to identify and compare evidence drawn from legal, economic, scientific, literary and artistic sources. Expected outcomes include broadening how we think about managing resources. Significant benefits include improving how we can analyse different management systems across different times and places, and high-quality early career training.Read moreRead less
Moral claims in international sports events. This project aims to understand how moral claims about international sport generate, reinforce and propagate normative views of global order. For over a century, advocates of the Olympic Games and other major international sports events have claimed that they bring moral benefits– from promoting peace to protecting human rights. This project aims to analyse how sport’s moral claims shape global norms and justify enormous outlays of financial and polit ....Moral claims in international sports events. This project aims to understand how moral claims about international sport generate, reinforce and propagate normative views of global order. For over a century, advocates of the Olympic Games and other major international sports events have claimed that they bring moral benefits– from promoting peace to protecting human rights. This project aims to analyse how sport’s moral claims shape global norms and justify enormous outlays of financial and political capital. By understanding why these claims have been so influential for over a century, the project aims to understand the major political and economic consequences of moral expectations around international sport.Read moreRead less
Rioting and the literary archive. This project aims to examine writers' enduring engagement with the riot's destructive energy and its transformative potential. Riots have become a familiar feature of an increasingly volatile global politics, but contemporary responses to these events have a long history across a range of media and modes of writing. Literary writers have historically struggled in the aftermath of riots to make sense of and communicate the collective trauma felt by families and c ....Rioting and the literary archive. This project aims to examine writers' enduring engagement with the riot's destructive energy and its transformative potential. Riots have become a familiar feature of an increasingly volatile global politics, but contemporary responses to these events have a long history across a range of media and modes of writing. Literary writers have historically struggled in the aftermath of riots to make sense of and communicate the collective trauma felt by families and communities who suffer resulting injury, death, homelessness or unemployment. Drawing together writing from Britain, United States of America, Australia and the Middle-East, this project will provide an understanding of the resurgence of the riot in a contemporary global context.Read moreRead less
Strategic Friendship: Anglo-German Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region. This project aims to investigate the untold history of Anglo-German cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through hitherto neglected German archival materials. These materials point to thriving and thick webs of mutual assistance in cultural, scientific, economic, military and political affairs that successfully weakened local sovereignty but ended abruptly with World War One. The project expects to produce a new history ....Strategic Friendship: Anglo-German Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Region. This project aims to investigate the untold history of Anglo-German cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through hitherto neglected German archival materials. These materials point to thriving and thick webs of mutual assistance in cultural, scientific, economic, military and political affairs that successfully weakened local sovereignty but ended abruptly with World War One. The project expects to produce a new history challenging century-long Anglophone understandings of Anglo-German antagonism in the Asia-Pacific region. Its benefits include providing new knowledge of the history of great power relations in the Asia-Pacific region and establishing an improved historical framework for understanding strategic cooperation in our region.Read moreRead less