July 2008 in RSSS
Coombs Creative Arts Fellow
Frank Moorhouse (Photo: Sydney PEN)
Frank Moorhouse is the latest H.C. Coombs Creative Arts Fellow, and is being hosted by the History Program in the Research School of Social Sciences. The Fellowship is administered and funded each year by the Research School of Humanities within the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.
The Miles Franklin Award-winning author Frank Moorhouse investigated the tension between imagination and historical research in a recent seminar at ANU.
The 2008 Coombs Creative Arts Fellow discussed the role of imagination in historical research and the contradictions between the two. “There has always been a tension between creative writers and scholars,” he said. “I’m interested in what the imagination is, and where it gets its validity from.”
“I am not a psychologist in any form, but I do know a bit about how the imagination works from my own personal experience,” he said.
He also spoke about the different types of imagination to do with dreaming, empathy, creativity and even deception, and argued that sometimes it’s hard for us to let our imagination take over. “Some authors claim that they ‘just do it’. I don’t believe that. I usually put myself into a sort of ‘isolation’ in order to think clearly and truly imagine.”
Frank used the experience of writing two of his League of Nations series, Grand Days and Dark Palace, to illustrate the research that is undertaken in order to write a historical novel. He said that the best historical novels need to be based not only on the research of scholars but on the author’s own research, so the writer can begin to imagine and have their own feelings on the topic.
Philosophy prize
Professor Kim Sterelny of the Philosophy Program, RSSS won the Jean Nicod Prize for 2008, and presented the Jean Nicod Lectures in Paris in May this year.
The Jean-Nicod lectures are delivered annually in Paris by a leading philosopher of mind and philosophically oriented cognitive scientist. The lectures are organized by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as part of its effort to develop the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science in France.
Besides the CNRS, the sponsors include the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).The recipient of the Prize is invited as a Research Director for one month by the EHESS.
The Jean-Nicod lecturer is expected to deliver at least four lectures on a topic of his or her choice, and subsequently to publish the set of lectures, or a monograph based on them in the Jean-Nicod Lectures series (MIT Press/Bradford Books; F. Recanati editor).
Further details of the Prize
The Prize is particularly timely since Professor Sterelny will be at ANU (RSSS) full-time as of July 2008. Previously he was half time at ANU and half time at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
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