31 July 2024: In the mid-year winter holidays, 40 senior high school students from Queensland, NSW, VIC and the ACT attended the Machiavelli-themed Western Civilisation Winter School at The University of Queensland (UQ).
The free residential program was open to high-achieving students in years 11 and 12. The two-and-a-half-day event included intellectually stimulating workshops led by UQ academics, as well as fun social activities.
Supported by the Ramsay Centre and led by UQ Professor Alastair Blanshard, Professor Richard Devetak, and Dr David Kearns with the assistance of 10 Western Civilisation undergraduate students, the Winter School was designed to enable students to experience what it is like to study Western Civilisation at UQ.
Since its creation in 1513, Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince has continued to attract intrigue and controversy with his clear-eyed examination of politics and the ‘art of ruling’.
At the Winter School, students explored the ethical questions that the treatise raises about the nature and ends of power, the place of morality in politics, and the characteristics of political virtue. The students were introduced to key themes of the text with a lecture and a close reading seminar with Professor Richard Devetak.
The event program also featured panels on Renaissance Art and Culture and Politics and Ethics offering students opportunities to discuss the influences on Machiavelli’s writing as well as how The Prince has influenced modern political discourse and debates.
For fun, the students participated in an evening tour of the Queensland Parliament House and a Machiavelli-themed movie night. The students also received a guided tour of Renaissance artworks at the Queensland Art Gallery by Dr Robert Brennan and visited the State Library of Queensland for a behind-the-scenes session examining rare books from the collection.
The Ramsay Centre and UQ entered a partnership in 2019. Worth more than $50 million over eight years, the partnership enables UQ to offer at least 150 undergraduate scholarships worth up to $32,000 p.a. over that period and to hire world-class educators to teach its Western Civilisation Program.
The program is led by internationally-acclaimed classicist, Professor Alastair Blanshard, and promises to immerse students in ‘…a creative and diverse curriculum with a strong focus on key intellectual works – artistic, musical, literary – that have shaped Western Civilisation from antiquity to the current day.’
The scholarships are awarded to academic high achievers who desire to make a difference. The scholars are taught in small class groups and receive academic mentoring. Each year the program also accepts increasing numbers of students without a scholarship reflecting the course’s growing popularity. UQ’s extended major in Western Civilisation, is now the single most competitive humanities course for entry in Australia.
For more information on UQ’s extended major in Western Civilisation go to: https://study.uq.edu.au/study-options/programs/bachelor-advanced-humanities-honours-2414/western-civilisation-wscivd2414
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098/ sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org