Key 96: Arts [ii] / John Medley Building 1971 / The Australian Centre 1989

 

A superficial consideration of the Arts Faculty in the 1970s might suggest that those disciplines at the core of the mid-nineteenth century University had remained relatively static while growth took place all around. If the status of a discipline is measured by numbers of professors and other senior staff, this is true enough. It is less so if actual students enrolled are taken into account, and perhaps even less so still if the number of students who complete three consecutive years of study in one department is taken into account. The major growth in the University was in professional faculties - and all of these apart from Law and Commerce drew heavily on the resources of the Science Faculty and underpinned its growth. The most significant proliferation of professors in the Arts Faculty was in mathematics (which re-located to the Science Faculty in 1965) and modern languages. While there was still only one professor of Classics, all the development in language studies was a natural partitioning of the foundation professor’s role in promoting language study. The foundation professor’s territory of Modern History & Literature, Political Economy and Logic had been sub-divided into a professor of English Language and Literature and the Robert Wallace Professor of English (from 1963) two professors of history (named for Max Crawford and Ernest Scott; the second from 1956), a professor of Philosophy (named for Boyce Gibson), and one of History and Philosophy of Science, two professors of Political Science and several professors concerned with the study of the economy - though these had been relocated to the Faculty of Commerce, to say nothing of groups of area studies and individual subject offerings over the post-war period that encompassed all of these disciplines to some degree.

Arts South (John Medley) building, 1971
Arts South (John Medley) building, 1971
[Source: University of Melbourne Archives Image Catalogue, UMA-I-1322]

The cramped conditions in the Old Arts building were relieved in 1971 when the larger departments and the Faculty Office moved into the twin towers building straddling the entrance from Grattan Street designed by Roy Grounds. Across from Grattan Street, in Barry Street, the Australian Centre was established in 1989; based in the Arts Faculty and headed by poet and professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe and critic D.J. (Dinny) O’Hearn, it would seek to sponsor cross-disciplinary cultural studies and to link the University to the community.

Chris Wallace-Crabbe (right) and Dinny O'Hearn (left)
Chris Wallace-Crabbe (right) and Dinny O'Hearn (left)
[Source: University of Melbourne Archives Media Photograph Collection, Photograph No 17137]