With the aim of raising the profile of humanist Latin in Australia, the Cassamarca Foundation created a Chair in Latin Humanism at The University of Western Australia – School of Humanities – in 2003. This position, with its emphasis on the place of Latin Humanism in the development of Western civilisation, truly captures the vision of the foundation’s president, Avvocato Onorevole Dino De Poli. For the incumbent, Yasmin Haskell, it is an unparalleled opportunity to broaden awareness of Latin writing in Europe since the Renaissance and of the values that lie at the heart of modern European culture.

Professor Haskell is quick to point out that Latin was the lingua franca of early modern intellectual life. “Latin was a language of science and literature, of women and men, of Europeans and non-Europeans,” she says. The international value of Latin was evident at a Cassamarca Foundation conference convened by Associate Professor Haskell in 2004. Its theme, “Latinity and Alterity in the Early Modern Period”, highlighted the way Latin was an educational and diplomatic medium at the frontiers of Europe, and also addressed its role in the New World of the Americas and the Far East. Fittingly, the conference brought together scholars from Italy, Belgium, Germany, the USA, Mexico, Portugal and the UK. (A volume arising from this conference will shortly be published by “Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies”.)

In 2006, with UWA colleague, Susan Broomhall, Professor Haskell organized another international conference in Perth: “Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Period”. This was supported by the Australian Research Council (through the “Network for Early European Research”), the Institute of Advanced Studies, and the Cassamarca Foundation. Again, a volume of essays is to be published (by Intellectual History Review, Routledge).

Professor Haskell has written on the intersections between poetry and religion, science, technology, and art, for example in her monograph, Loyola’s Bees, on Jesuit didactic poetry (Oxford, 2003). Among her ongoing projects is a book on the eighteenth-century Dutch doctor and Latin poet, Gerard Nicolaas Heerkens. Her research into psychosomatic illness in early modern Italy is funded by the Australian Research Council, and she is currently commissioning essays for a collection, Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period (which will include a contribution by Dr Guido Giglioni, Cassamarca Lecturer in Neo-Latin Cultural and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute, London).

In 2007, Professor Haskell will co-ordinate an interdisciplinary undergraduate unit at the University of Western Australia on “Mysticism, Melancholy, and Madness in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods”. “One of the best ways of illustrating the relevance of Latin humanism in Australia is by drawing attention to the indispensability of Latin to the understanding of the history of other disciplines, including law, medicine, science and philosophy,” she explains. Her personal aim is to increase the uptake of Latin by students who are not majoring in Classics.

In 2007, Professor Haskell became co-ordinator of an international research cluster in “Latin’s long histories and interdisciplinary applications”, supported by the Australian Research Council’s “Network for Early European Research”. For more information on the aims of this cluster, and profiles of members, please see: http://confluence.arts.uwa.edu.au/display/LATIN/Home. The group is working towards an international symposium in 2009 to explore the following topics:

• What is Latin ‘culture’, and how should the long history of Latin be taught?

• Can Latin bridge the ‘two cultures’ of medieval and early modern? The Nachleben of medieval Latinity in the early modern period.

• Documenting the presence of Latin in early modern Australasia -- lessons from New Spain and the British Caribbean.

• Interdisciplinary research involving Latin – opportunities and pitfalls.

ABC Radio National: What's so new about neo-Latin? Listen to the radio segment by clicking on the following link:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/linguafranca/stories/2007/2062977.htm

Watch this space!

Professor Haskell grew up in Sydney, but came to UWA from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Research Fellow at Newnham College and in the Faculties of Classics and Modern and Medieval Languages.

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