NEER Research Cluster

Latin's long histories and interdisciplinary applications

MEMBERS

Yasmin Haskell (UWA) - Coordinator
Juanita Ruys (Sydney)
Frances Muecke (Sydney)
Emma Gee (St Andrews, Scotland)
Andrew Laird (Warwick, UK)
John Gilmore (Warwick, UK)
Joseph Farrell (Pennsylvania, USA)
Rita Copeland (Pennsylvania, USA)
Arthur Eyffinger (Independent Scholar, director of 'JUDICAP')
Maurizio Campanelli (Independent Scholar, Rome)
Agata Pincelli (Independent Scholar, Rome)

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

The functions of this Research Cluster include:

• raising awareness in Australia/ Australasia of the long history of Latin and demonstrate its indispensability for a balanced understanding of the history, science, religion, and thought of pre-modern Europe;

• collaborating with researchers in medicine, the sciences, jurisprudence, and other fields, to develop interdisciplinary projects involving Latin;

• documenting largely unexplored evidence, in Latin, about historical contacts between European and non-European cultures, from Australasia to the Americas, from Africa to the Middle East.

CONFERENCES AND SYMPOSIA

June 2007: Haskell was an invited plenary speaker at a conference on the "Languages of Science in Linnaeus' Time" at the University of Uppsala.

July 2007: Haskell and Ruys both participated in the Inaugural NEER International Conference, University of Western Australia, Perth. Haskell presented a keynote paper on her neo-Latin research and also convened a meeting to discuss Cluster issues.

July/August 2007: Muecke presented a paper "Poetry on Rome from the ambience of Pomponio Leto" to the Centre for Medieval Studies (27.7.07) and in the Italian Studies research Seminar (23.8.07), University of Sydney.

July 2008: Haskell spoke on her new Latin project at "Notebooks and note-taking from Da Vinci to Darwin", NEER Theme conference convened by Prof. Richard Yeo (Griffith) and Prof. Michael Bennett (Tasmania)

November 2008: Haskell spoke at the fifth international "Variantology / Archaeology of the Media" workshop in Naples, convened by Prof. Dr Siegfried Zielinski of the Berlin University of the Arts.

Laird 2007:

Laird organized "Classical Traditions in the Hispanic World", Warwick, March 2007 and "European and New World Forms of Knowledge in Colonial Spanish America", Newberry Library Chicago, USA July 21-August 5 2007. He presented the following conference papers on themes relevant to the Cluster:
(ii) "Ovid in New Spain: Latin and Vernacular in Renaissance Spain", Nottingham University, UK, April 2007;
(iii) "Indigenous and creole cultures of Latin in colonial Mexico", Early Modern Latin Texts and Contexts, Sandjberg, Denmark, May 2007;
(iv) "Pagan Gods and Christian Images: Italian Humanism and Mexico II (1590-1780)", Istituto di Studi Piceni, Sassoferrato Italy, July 2007;
(v) 3 papers (a. "Latin and Nahuatl"; b. "Interrogating the Classical tradition in colonial Spanish America"; c. "Virgil and an Indian cloak: Latin centos and poetry on Virgin of Guadalupe" at Conference (ii) above, Chicago 2007;
(vi) "Aristotle in the New World: A bibliographical and chronological survey of Latin philosophical texts from New Spain and their reception", for conference on "The Diffusion of Renaissance Aristotelianism: Latin, Vernacular, and Art in the Classical Tradition", Palazzo Pesaro Papafava, Venice, September 2007;
(vii) "Latin didactic poetry on agriculture in colonial Latin America" at a conference on "Ressourcenknappheit und Versorgungsstrategien" Tubingen, Germany, 20th-21st October 2007.

A Cluster conference is planned for 2009.

PUBLICATIONS

Haskell and Ruys have edited Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period, which is to be published next year by "Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies" (Renaissance Society of America). It includes contributions by Laird, Ruys, and Muecke.

Haskell has published with (non-cluster member) Susan Broomhall a special issue of Intellectual History Review on "Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern ERA", which includes her own (peer-reviewed) paper on eighteenth-century Latin medical poetry.

Haskell has also published:

"Poetry or Pathology? Hypochondriacal Priests in Early Modern Naples", Early Science and Medicine (Leiden: Brill) 12. 2 (2007), 187-213.

"Religion and Enlightenment in the Neo-Latin Reception of Lucretius", in the Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, ed. Stuart Gillespie and Philip Hardie (Cambridge, CUP: 2007), 185-201.

"A Dutch doctor's observations on the health of scholars, young and old: Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens' De valetudine litteratorum (Leiden, 1749; Rheims, 1749; Groningen, 1790)", in Miraculum eruditionis: Neo-Latin studies in Houour of Hans helander, Maria Berggren and Christer Henriksen ed. (Uppsala, 2007).

Laird and Haskell are contributing to The Blackwell's Companion to Vergil, edited by Farrell (with Prof. Michael Putnam).

Laird's most recent publications may be viewed here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/classics/staff/andrewlaird

Gilmore has recently published Musae Anglicanae Anglice Redditae, an anthology of British Latin verse from the eighteenth century, with original verse translations (Derek Wallcott Press, 2007).

Copeland has published "The History of Rhetoric and the Longue Duree", JEGP 106 (2007): 176-202.

Muecke continues to collaborate with Pincelli on an edition for the "I Tatti Renaissance Library" (Harvard).

Muecke has also published/ had accepted:

"Poetry on Rome from the ambience of Pomponio Leto", L'Ellisse, 2 (2007);

Muecke with C. Allen, an edition of Francois Gacon's Latin translation of Boileau's Art poetique in Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period (above);

"Pomponio Leto and Silius Italicus", invited entry for Repertorium Pomponianum (web-site) (posted 21 April 2008);

Addenda to the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum article on Silius Italicus, accepted for Vol. IX (ed. V. Brown) (15 January 2008);

Muecke with R. Forgacs,"'Dulces discet ab arte sonos: The Latin Didactic Poem of Philomathes (Vienna, 1512)" in J. Ruys ed., What Nature Does Not Teach: Didactic Literature in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, forthcoming (Turnhout: Brepols). The last volume also contains a paper by Gee on Latin astronomical poetry and one by Haskell on Latin philosophical poetry;

Muecke with M-A.Pincellia, "Flavio Biondo" entry for Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of St Augustine (Oxford University Press) (accepted July 2008.

Campanellia and Ottaviani have published: "Settecento Latino 1" in L'Ellisse: Studi Storici Di Letteratura Italiana 2, 2007, 169-203.

GRANTS APPLIED FOR

Muecke applied (2008) for an ARC Discovery Project on renaissance antiquarian, Flavio Biodo.

Haskell applied (2008) for an ARC Discovery Project on Latin in the Enlightenment.

GRANTS ACHIEVED

ARC Discovery Project: "Mapping the Latin Enlightenment: Centres and Peripheries, 2009-2011". Haskell will collaborate on this grant with Campanelli and Pincelli.

Vistiting Fellowship in Medieval Latin at the University of St Andrew's (Campanelli).

AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK) Research Fellowship on project "Religion and Public Life in Late Medieval Italy", directed by Dr Frances Andrews (University of St Andrews) (Pincelli)

Visiting Fellowship at All Souls' College, Oxford, Hilary and Trinity Terms 2009 (Haskell).

NEER Discretionary fund $2000 for conference in 2009.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

Haskell broadcast "What's so new about neo-Latin?" on ABC Radio National's Lingua Franca programme, October 2007