Shawn Ross

Learning Outcomes Assessment and History: TEQSA, the after Standards Project and the QA/QI Challenge in Australia.

Higher education in Australia is currently in a state of flux, with the Federal Government’s Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency commencing operations in January 2012. The ‘After Standards Project’ has been working with Australian university history departments and the Australian Historical Association, educating and empowering the discipline to act as a united community and assert ownership of a standards process. This article provides a stocktake of the achievements and challenges the After Standards Project has faced in coming to terms with the new environment and resultant new demands around compliance and accountability. It discusses the After Standards Project’s work in terms of both quality assurance and quality improvement, with reference to the establishment of a set of discipline standards and the trial of an accreditation scheme.

APPLYING STANDARDS TO TERTIARY-LEVEL HISTORY: POLICY, CHALLENGES AND THE AFTER STANDARDS PROJECT

This paper discusses the challenges of applying standards to the teaching of tertiary-level history. It gives a critical overview of the emerging standards process in Australia, re-emphasising the importance of disciplinary input in producing a workable and acceptable regulatory framework under the aegis of Australia’s recently-established Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). To this end, it argues for the importance of building capacity within the history discipline both to engage with policy makers in coming months, and to take an active role in defining and implementing national standards for tertiary history. It suggests the potential of grassroots initiatives such as the After Standards project to assist historians in meeting this challenge. This article has been peer-reviewed

Barbarophonos: Language and Panhellenism in the Iliad

he extent of panhellenism in early Archaic Greece provokes considerable disagreement. Although it is widely agreed that full-fledged Panhellenism had emerged by the beginning of the Classical period, the nature—and even the very existence—of earlier proto-Panhellenism remains the subject of debate. Examination of one important component of mature Panhellenism—language—in what is arguably the earliest available literary source, the Iliad, should serve to illuminate the extent and saliency of Panhellenic identity in the eighth century b.c.e. Although the speaking of different languages is only rarely acknowledged in early epic poetry, the Iliad included, the instances of linguistic diversity that do occur in the Iliad follow a consistent pattern. On the one hand, Akhaians and Trojans communicate freely with one another; no hard linguistic dividing line between Akhaians and others emerges over the course of the epic, nor does it appear that the later, categorical Greek-Barbarian dichotomy has yet emerged. On the other hand, through poetic emphasis or suppression, linguistic diversity is limited to the Trojan ejpÇkouroi (allies or companions) defending the city, while it is absent from the Akhaian forces besieging Troy. This differential treatment of Akhaian and Trojan forces reveals a notion of “pan-Akhaian” linguistic uniformity, distinct from the cacophony of the Trojan host, perhaps indicating the coalescing of a non-oppositional but shared Greek identity. Even though no language barrier separates Akhaians from Trojans in the epics, the selective recognition of linguistic diversity among Trojan ejpÇkouroi, versus the homogeneity of the Akhaians, offers a glimpse of an undeveloped and unstable proto-Panhellenism. Anyone employing the Iliad or Odyssey as an historical source must grapple with two related difficulties: uncertainties over the date when the poems reached more or less their final form and over the date of the society from which the world of the epics is principally drawn. Opinion varies widely on both issues.1