By Anthony Barich
CAMPION College, Australia’s first Liberal Arts college in the Catholic tradition, will launch a new Centre for the Study of Western Tradition to clarify the link between teaching and research, facilitate dialogue with other academic institutions and encourage its students to participate in research.
The Centre, to be launched during semester early next year at the College’s Old Toongabbie campus, will be devoted to research in the ‘humane studies’ that characterise Western civilisation and culture, including European, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine and Near Eastern traditions.
It will encourage critical reflection and research on the history, literature, languages, philosophy and theology that characterise Western civilisation and culture, in order to raise the profile of these “vital” disciplines in Australian tertiary education, according to the Centre’s draft terms of reference. These integrated humane studies evolved from the classical and medieval Liberal Arts, including European, Græco-Roman, Byzantine and Near Eastern traditions.
“They remain an essential key to a rich understanding of Australian culture and society, including our ideals of democracy, our Enlightenment heritage, our Christian-oriented past, our multi-cultural identity, and the classical underpinnings of our education,” the terms of reference said.
“During the past generation, the epicentre of Australian academic interest has shifted very distinctly towards Asian and Indigenous studies. The Centre fully recognises the rightness and appropriateness of that, given Australia’s geographical placement in the world, but insists on the need to affirm the equal importance of the traditional humanities within the ecology of our nation’s collective intelligence.
By adopting a broad scope, the Centre avoids the trappings of focusing too narrowly on the methods and ideals of one discipline. Instead, it aims to draw attention to the inter-disciplinary foundations of scientia, ie the knowledge that we seek in our interaction with the world and in the canons of Western tradition which are promoted in all branches of scholarship.”
The Centre’s research themes will include:
– Christianity in Australia
– The Emergence of the Medieval World View through the Scholarly Examination of Primary Sources in the Original Language
– Liberal Education in the Twenty-First Century
– The Development of European Scientific Thought
– The Conceptualisation of Democracy and Freedom in the West.
The Centre will host its first workshop on ‘History of the Liberal Arts and its Relevance to Tertiary Education Today’ on 3 December this year.
The workshop will examine what recent trends in tertiary education – including ‘the Bologna Modal in Europe and ‘the Melbourne Model’ in Australia – mean for modern universities and will explore the premise that liberal studies should form the foundation of moves towards broad-based undergraduate degrees, before students enter into post-graduate and vocationally-oriented programmes.
The Centre will stage a seminar series, annual conferences and student symposia.
Luciano Boschiero, Vice Dean of Campion College, history professor and Centre coordinator, told The Record that, to start with, Campion College hopes the opening workshop on Liberal Arts will gauge how other academics, journalists and commentators rate the place of Liberal Arts in tertiary education. Students will also be invited to participate in symposia from next year.