DIRK BALTZLY JOHN CLARK ALISON LEWIS J. LEA BENESS AND JOY DAMOUSI ANN MCGRATH TOM HILLARD LOUISE EDWARDS ALEXIS WRIGHT CLINT BRACKNELL 11 / 2020 THE JOURNAL OF THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES 3 Editor’s Introduction GRAHAM TULLOCH 6 Being Humane—A Contested History The 50th Annual Academy Lecture JOY DAMOUSI 19 Maya Waabiny: Mobilising Song Archives to Nourish an Endangered Language The 9th Hancock Lecture CLINT BRACKNELL 28 The Humanities in Service of Empire DIRK BALTZLY 38 Multiple Modernities: An Art History of ‘The Asian Modern’ JOHN CLARK 47 Legacies of East German Communism: Thoughts From Germany During the Covid-19 Pandemic ALISON LEWIS 58 The Clash of Ideologies, Classes and Personalities in Rome of the Second Century bce The 21st Trendall Lecture J. LEA BENESS AND TOM HILLARD 69 Monumental Discovery Narratives and Deep History ANN McGRATH 81 Soldier Beauties and Sailor Sons in Republican China LOUISE EDWARDS 94 About Sending Letters—an excerpt from Carpentaria ALEXIS WRIGHT THE ACADEMY COUNCIL President Joy Damousi Honorary Secretary Elizabeth Minchin Welcome Treasurer It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 11th edition of the Richard Waterhouse Vice-Presidents Australian Academy of the Humanities’ flagship publication, Elizabeth Minchin Humanities Australia, edited by Graham Tulloch FAHA. Louise Edwards Editor For 50 years, the Academy has been dedicated to advancing Graham Tulloch scholarship and promoting understanding of the humanities International Secretary Louise Edwards across our education and research sectors, and in the broader Immediate Past President community. Founded by Royal Charter in 1969, the Academy John Fitzgerald now comprises over six hundred Fellows elected on the Ordinary Members Lesley Head basis of the excellence and impact of their scholarship. Our Duncan Ivison Jennifer Milam Fellows have been recognised nationally and internationally Julian Thomas for outstanding work in the disciplines of archaeology, art, Sean Ulm Asian and European studies, classical and modern literature, cultural and communication studies, language and linguistics, CONTACT DETAILS For further information about the Australian philosophy, musicology, the arts, history and religion. Academy of the Humanities, contact us: Email In a year that has been marked by unprecedented challenges, [email protected] including devastating bushfires, a global health crisis, and Web www.humanities.org.au threats to the livelihood of the humanities disciplines within Telephone the higher education sector, the humanities are needed (+61 2) 6125 9860 now more than ever. Humanities, arts and cultural research, with its deep understanding of human experience and EDITORIAL/PRODUCTION knowledge, makes a significant contribution to the way Academy Editor Graham Tulloch in which we not only make sense of these current crises Design and Layout by but also shows how we can work towards an improved, Gillian Cosgrove stronger, and more sustainable world in their wake. Editorial Support by Liz Bradtke This year’s issue of Humanities Australia once again Printing Canprint, Canberra features essays, reflections and fiction by our Fellows that Cover illustration showcase this kind of research in action. As in previous Joy Damousi’s family migrating to Australia in 1956 from Florina, Greece. Reproduced with years, it also features edited versions of several of our kind permission from Joy Damousi. key lectures including the annual Academy Lecture, the Trendall Lecture and the Hancock lecture, and we are © 2020 Australian Academy of the delighted to be able to provide a platform for readers to Humanities and individual contributors engage with these timely and compelling addresses. ISSN 1837–8064 I hope you will enjoy reading this 11th edition of Humanities Funding for the production of this publication has been provided by the Australian Government through Australia. It offers outstanding examples of the exemplary the Department of Education, Skills and Employment. research being undertaken in our disciplines. ¶ The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of JOY DAMOUSI FASSA FAHA Education, Skills and Employment or the Australian Academy of the Humanities. President, Australian Academy The illustrations and certain identified inclusions of the Humanities, 2017– in the text are held under separate copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without the permission of the respective copyright holders. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders for illustrative material in this journal. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher. Editor’s Introduction GRAHAM TULLOCH This year, 2020, has been a tumultuous In her 2019 Academy Lecture, given in the year for the world to which Australia has year of the Academy’s 50th anniversary, Joy added its own particular troubles and Damousi addresses one of the key human concerns. We began the year with bushfires issues: the treatment of immigrants, in around the country and then encountered particular refugees and asylum seekers. the Covid-19 pandemic, with its immense Drawing on a long train of events, including threats to lives and livelihoods and with the her own family’s experiences, she explores creative and performing arts and universities the varying attitudes which have underlain being amongst the sectors hardest hit by the reception of a range of different refugee its economic consequences. Along the way groups in Australia, revealing just how much there have been heightening tensions in our ‘being humane’ has been a contested history. relations with China and renewed attention At the end she poses the question: ‘How to Indigenous disadvantage, highlighted by do we humanise the future then in light of the Black Lives Matter movement, while this past history and the present?’ However government funding proposals have provoked in answering that ‘the need to humanise questions about the place in our education refugees and their experience is paramount’, system of key disciplines in the humanities. she concludes that ‘none of this … can be done Human solutions are needed to address the without in parallel humanising the future immense challenges facing humanity and for Indigenous Australians’. Looking for a in this context the value and strength of more humane Australia we need to address the humanities in facing human issues has both issues. never been clearer. The articles in Humanities Clint Bracknell’s Hancock Lecture, the Australia have always, by their very nature, ninth in the series, given at the Academy addressed topics of relevance to this country, Symposium in November 2019, addresses but it so happens that a number of articles one key aspect of ‘humanising the future in this edition address issues that have been for Indigenous Australians’, the recovery particularly prominent over the course of the and revitalisation of Indigenous language. year, either through considering contemporary When Europeans arrived in Australia events or through the lens of other places and they encountered an incredibly rich and times. So we offer this issue of Humanities diverse culture but they largely ignored or Australia as a particularly direct response to misunderstood it and all too often actively this troubled year in which it appears. attempted to destroy it. While this cultural HUMANITIES AUSTRALIA 11 / 2020 3 heritage has been all but lost in many cases, in reference also to Japan, the article illustrates other cases it does survive, ready to be revived something of the diversity, vitality and and reinvigorated by Indigenous memory and complexity of Asian responses to the notions of through linguistic research. As this lecture what constitutes modernism. shows, by considering the case of Noongar, In ‘Legacies of East German Communism: music is a hugely important instrument in this Thoughts from Germany during the COVID-19 recovery of human stories and human culture, Pandemic’ Alison Lewis addresses one of the especially when led by Indigenous people for most crucial questions which the pandemic Indigenous people. Community involvement has raised: how will the authorities and the in this program, along with the use of digital public handle restrictions imposed in an technology as a means of preservation and attempt to control the virus? She explains dissemination, has been crucial to its success. that, living in Berlin earlier this year, ‘On At a time when the value of traditional many occasions when confronted with rows humanities education has been called into of empty shelves in supermarkets and the question Dirk Baltzly comes at this issue from sight of queues outside them, I was reminded a very long historical perspective. By focusing of the fabled chronic shortages in the GDR.’ on the education system of the late Roman This leads her to the observation that ‘For empire with its emphasis on literary studies many locals, the public health crisis awakened and philosophy (which we recognise as key painful memories of being robbed of one’s disciplines in the humanities), he considers civil liberties—the right to associate and how far this kind of education served the freedom of movement.’ The article considers needs of imperial Roman government. the response to this situation, weaving the The late Roman empire with its (literally discussion around the story of a representative and metaphorically) Byzantine bureaucracy victim of Stasi oppression and