Leonard Cohen’s final (posthumous) book was released in Australia this week. Another new book sheds light on Cohen’s life on Hydra in the 1960s and the relationships he forged with Antipodeans seeking liberation there.
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A growing number of parents are making money out of their children by turning them into social media celebrities. But the chimera of corporate branding is no antidote for lives lived in precarious times.
For decades, academics have been portrayed as brilliant, heroic men on our cinema screens. It’s time to tell the story of more heroic female scholars. Here are some suggestions.
The enquiry into sacredness is not over, it’s just beginning for the 21st century, and in wildly disparate modes and places. In music, Nick Cave, Hozier and Dr G. Yunupingu have led the way.
In early 20th-century Australia, a series of highly publicised murders of women saw newspapers widely discuss sadism.
We need a new national narrative, for reasons of diplomacy, trade and social cohesion and to grapple with many global challenges. The humanities and social sciences will be vital in shaping it.
In the 1940s, the last initiated Ngadjuri man, Barney Waria, gave a series of interviews to anthropologist Ronald Berndt. Almost 80 years later, Waria’s grandson wants to share this material with his family.
The ibis has become an Australian cultural phenomenon. The birds’ tenacity and fearlessness as environmental refugees mean they attract love and hate alike.
In the mid 19th century, kangaroo hunting was a sport. Colonial hunting clubs were established across Australia and everyone from Charles Darwin to Anthony Trollope tried their hand at shooting roos.
Food is an increasingly popular ingredient in crime fiction, serving up insights into the character of the detective hero and adding spice to the mystery.
Australian operas have been written about many pressing topics - from the Stolen Generations to the Lindy Chamberlain case - but few have been staged a second time. What is going wrong?
The latest scary shark film, The Meg, opens this week. But fictionalised tales of monster fish blind us to the important role sharks play in maintaining the health of our oceans.
The female dwarf, disability, and beauty
The Conversation, CC BY23.2 MB (download)
For centuries, women with dwarfism were depicted in art as comic or grotesque fairytale beings. But artists are challenging these portrayals and notions of beauty and physical difference.
It is 50 years since anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner gave the Boyer Lectures in which he coined the phrase ‘the great Australian silence’. How far have we come since?
Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.
Australia’s rich tradition of crime fiction is little known – early tales told of bushrangers and convicts, one hero was a mining engineer turned amateur detective – but it reveals a range of national myths and fantasies.
Climate change can seem far removed from our everyday lives, which is why a citizen science program measuring how frogs are dealing with a warming world is so important.
Whether being called ‘curry munchers’ or pigeonholed as authorities on a dish largely invented by the British, diasporic South Asians are emulsified in a deep pool of curry.
Coined in a science-fiction novel in 1995, the Anglosphere has become Australia’s cultural (and political) obsession. That leaves us blind to other perspectives.
The powerful ideological connection between Australia and agriculture is being increasingly scrutinised. A spate of recent books have recast basic assumptions about our relationship to the land.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
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Honorary Professor, The University of Queensland
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Associate Professor, Griffith University
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Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
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Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, The University of Queensland
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Lecturer, Deakin University
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Professor Emeritus of Media and Culture, Griffith University, Griffith University
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Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor (adjunct) in Creative Writing, Flinders University
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Fashion historian, Edith Cowan University
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Professor of English, Flinders University
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Associate Professor Visual Communication, University of Technology Sydney
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Sessional academic, Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language, and Literature, Macquarie University
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Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne
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Adjunct Professor of Art History, Australian National University
