Institute of Advanced Studies

Historical and contemporary perspectives

After the successful series of lectures in 2006 on Terrorism: Historical and contemporary perspectives and racisms and the New Europe in 2003, the Institute of Advanced Studies and the History Discipline at UWA co-presented a series of public lectures on the historical and contemporary perspectives of dictators.

The series presented a cross-disciplinary focus on dictatorships by inviting scholars working on historical and contemporary dictatorships to present papers, and made the evening lectures open to the widest public audience with an interest in political and social movements, their methodologies and repercussions. The series formed part of a History Honours seminar.

A number of distinguished scholars from the disciplines of History, Literature, Political Science, European, Latin American and African Studies, both from The University of Western Australia and internationally, presented lectures in this exciting new series.

Lectures

1 August: Sulla and the nature of the classical dictator. Dr Alexander Thein, University College, Dublin.  Read associated paper.  

8 August: The Nearly Men: France and its Caesars since Napoleon. Professor Nick Atkin, Reading University

15 August: Time of the Nazis. Past, Present and Future in the Third Reich. Chris Clark, St Catharine's College, Cambridge;

22 August: Hitler. Peter Monteath, Flinders University

29 August: Franco, franquistas and Francoism; General Francisco Franco: Europe's most durable dictator. Judith Keene, University of Sydney

5 September: Stalin. Mark Edele, The University of Western Australia

26 September: Despotism and Dictatorship in Twentieth Century Africa: The case of Uganda under Amin. Jeremy Martens, The University of Western Australia

3 October: Heil Aragorn! The Führer-Ideology in Contemporary Fantasy Literature. Rob Stuart, The University of Western Australia

10 October: Benito Mussolini and the model of dictatorship. Richard Bosworth, The University of Western Australia