ENH4070

Intellectual life in nineteenth-century Melbourne

H Love

12 points
* 2 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should have acquired an understanding of the disciplinary procedures of intellectual history, along with enhanced interpretative, research and writing skills.

Synopsis This subject offers a research-oriented study of the intellectual life of Melbourne during its period as capital of the self-governing colony of Victoria. Students will be encouraged to undertake original investigations in such fields as (1) daily and weekly journalism; (2) medicine and science; (3) clubs, societies and academies; (4) responses to intellectual innovations (eg Darwinism, spiritualism, socialism, `the new woman', the ideas of Herbert Spencer); (5) literature and the arts; (6) libraries and the book trade; (7) the professionalisation of intellectual work; and (8) significant individuals. The aim of the subject is to demonstrate the vigour and variety of intellectual debate and its constituent discourses with special attention to influences which are still active at the present day.

Assessment Seminar contribution and two 4500-word research essays to be developed from seminar papers

Recommended texts

Borchardt D and W Kirsop (eds) The book in Australia Australian Research Publications
Davison G The rise and fall of marvellous Melbourne MUP
Hergenhan L (ed.)The Penguin new literary history of Australia Penguin
Home R W Australian science in the making CUP
Love H James Edward Neild: Victorian virtuoso MUP
Pensabene T S The rise of the medical practitioner in Victoria ANUP
Stuart L Nineteenth-century Australian periodicals: An annotated bibliography Hale and Iremonger, 1979