2005 Media Releases
Tuesday, 5 July 2005
The Inaugural La Trobe University Jim Allen Lecture: Images of the Classical World through a broader prism
A new public lecture series to bring archaeological scholars of significant international reputation to Australia to enrich teaching and research will be launched by La Trobe University next Monday, 11 July.
Named ‘The Allen Lecture’, the annual event honours one of Australia’s pre-eminent archaeologists, La Trobe University Foundation Professor of Archaeology, Jim Allen.
The inaugural lecture will be given by the Director of the National Institute for the History of Art in Paris, Professor Alain Schnapp. He will speak on Vestiges, Monuments, and Ruins: East faces West.
Alain Schnapp, an internationally recognised historian of archaeology and classical archaeologist, is also Professor of Archaeology at the University of Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne).
But it is the wide interdisciplinary contexts in which he works that make his contributions particularly noteworthy, says La Trobe University Head of the School of Historical and European Studies and Professor of Archaeology, Tim Murray, who is hosting the new lecture series.
He says Professor Schnapp’s work interprets Greek images and their use and display to explain the social history of ancient cities. For example, some of his research on the representations of hunting and female youth in the Greek world, published in 1997, dealt with the use of hunting and erotic imagery.
His more recent research has concentrated on the image of the city and the link between the symbolism of the body and civic space. Currently Alain Schnapp is working on the history and the interpretation of traditional Greek imagery from antiquity until the Age of Enlightenment.
Professor Schnapp has also conducted numerous excavations in Italy and Greece at the sites of Laos (Italy) and Eleftherna (Crete), most recently publishing reports of the excavations of 25 square kilometres of urban and agricultural land at the site of Itanos in Crete.
While at La Trobe, Professor Schnapp will also have the honorary degree ‘Doctor of Letters’ conferred upon him by the University in recognition of his outstanding contribution to advancing the study of archaeology in Europe and Australia.
Professor Murray says Professor Schnapp has played a valuable role in developing the study of archaeology at La Trobe ‘as a source of advice and by demonstrating the great benefits that can flow to archaeology through a meaningful intersection with art history and the traditions of antiquarian scholarship’.
Professor Jim Allen was appointed Foundation Professor of the Department of Archaeology at La Trobe University in 1985 and, from 1993 until his retirement from full time academia in 1998, he was an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the University.
During his long archaeological career Jim Allen was most famously associated with two major research projects: the Lapita Homeland Project (based in Melanesia) and the Southern Forests Archaeological Project (based in Tasmania). In 1998 he was appointed Professor Emeritus in La Trobe University and is currently also a Fellow in the Centre for Archaeological Research at the ANU and Research Professor in Anthropology at the University of Utah.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be given at 5.15 pm on Monday 11 July, 3rd floor, David Myers Building, on La Trobe University’s main Melbourne campus at Bundoora.
For interviews with Professor Schnapp or for further assistance:
Please contact Professor Tim Murray on (03) 9479 2418 or (03) 9479 2978.