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Imagination lifting itself up
The Works That Shaped the World Lecture Series was established in 2019 by the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Centre to showcase contemporary scholarship in the humanities. Inspired by and parallel with the HRC’s series on Books that Changed Humanity, Works that Shaped the World features lectures by major scholars on astonishing creations that have shaped people’s lives: thoughts and events; images and music; engineering and technology. A ‘work’ in this series might be anything from a bridge to a book, an idea to a machine – in our first year the theme was 'The Moon' and the ANU's Vice Chancellor, the Nobel astrophysicist Prof Brian Schmidt, talked about the 1969 Moonlanding, Prof Tom Griffiths about what the earth looks like from the moon, Dr Sonia Pertsinidis about Pythagoras, Dr Kate Flaherty about Shakespeare’s moon, and HRC Head Prof Will Christie about the Lunar Society of Birmingham, Dr Gemma King about Georges Méliès' Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), and Prof Tony Dreise about the moon and the stars in Aboriginal science and lore.
Our theme in 2021 is Medical Humanities:
24 June MID-YEAR BREAK
29 July Prof Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney), ‘Charles E. Rosenberg’s The Cholera Years and the Family Resemblances of Pandemics’
26 Aug Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen (University of Newcastle), ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-III’
30 Sept Prof Alison Bashford (UNSW), ‘The Rev Thomas R. Malthus and his Essay on Population’
28 Oct Prof Rachel Ankeny (University of Adelaide), ‘The concepts and practices associated with “model organisms”’
25 Nov Prof Simone Dennis (ANU), ‘Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966)’
Upcoming events
Works that Shaped the World: Charles E Rosenberg’s The Cholera Years (1962) and the Family Resemblances of Pandemics
5pm 29 Jul 2021
The crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has flushed out a gaggle of historians of medicine, all of us eager to read the lessons of history or, alternatively, make...Works that Shaped the World: ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-V’
5–6.30pm 26 Aug 2021
The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-III, is widely regarded as a watershed in the history of...Works that Shaped the World: Malthus and the Modern World
5–6.30pm 30 Sep 2021
As the planet approaches 8 billion, international debate on population will be ignited again, and as with 7 billion, 6 billion and 5 billion, discussion will...Works that Shaped the World: The concepts and practices associated with “model organisms”
5–6.30pm 28 Oct 2021
This talk explores the concept of the ‘model organism’ in contemporary biology. Use of non-human organisms such as fruitflies, mice, and worms has become...Past events
Works that Shaped the World: No single story: Medical Humanities from the Parallel Chart to Performance Art
20 May 2021
Following the inspiration of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, this presentation explores the multiple history of the Medical Humanities, selecting three moments in...Works that Shaped the World: William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
15 Oct 2020
“MR WORDSWORTH’S genius is a pure emanation of the Spirit of the Age”, wrote the critic and journalist, William Hazlitt: “It is one of the innovations of...Works that Shaped the World: The “Gweagal” shield: Cook at Kamay (Botany Bay) 1770
8 Oct 2020
A recording of this event is now available to listen to as a Works that Shaped the World Podcast. Violence marred the encounter between the British and...Works that Shaped the World: Sarah Bellamy (1770-1843) and Women Transported to Botany Bay
1 Oct 2020
Born in 1770, 250 years ago, Sarah Bellamy was one of the longest lived first fleeters by the time of her death in 1843. Owing to the dearth of records,...Works that Shaped the World: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
24 Sep 2020
From nationalism to liberalism to communism, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel inspired a variety of modern ideologies that share at least one thing in...
