From talk of a ‘poisonous doctrine’ to mistaken beliefs that he hailed from Africa, Western thinkers got Buddhism wrong for a long time.
John Kinsella, top right, and (clockwise), Kwame Dawes, Thurston Moore and Charmaine Papertalk Green.
Courtesy Tamati Smith, The Thurston Moore Group, the University of Nebraska
How do you write a poem with someone else? John Kinsella has collaborated with musician Thurston Moore, Yamaji poet Charmaine Papertalk Green and Ghanaian-Jamaican Kwame Dawes. He offers some clues.
Akuch Kuol Anyieth pictured in Melbourne with her mother Mary.
Author provided
At the age of five, Akuch Kuol Anyieth climbed into a cattle truck to journey to the refugee camp known as Kakuma. This is her story.
Why don’t chimpanzees rule the world? Is storytelling - the mysterious glue that enables millions of humans to cooperate effectively - the answer?
Shutterstock
A close friend of John Curtin, Dame Mary Gilmore wrote poems on topics such as colonial violence and the plight of the koala. How has her great, great nephew, Scott Morrison, chosen to remember her?
Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame at the National Press Club last month.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Australia’s political economy was built on the primacy of (white) male labor, male power and male control, writes Julianne Schultz. Women have changed this culture - but still risk abuse when speaking out.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel transformed women’s fashion across the world: how do we recognise her complex background, difficult choices and ongoing legacy?
Breastplate, of metal, engraved ‘McIntyre King of Mannilla’, c.1860–1874. ‘King’ McIntyre (c.1814–74) . Donated by A.W. Wilkins to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, 1930.
Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery
Women were always important to the Beatles, yet Yoko Ono, in particular, faced extreme criticism for partnering with John Lennon. How does Peter Jackson’s Get Back present Ono and Linda Eastman?
My family is Mauritian, but when I take a DNA test, Mauritian didn’t even rank as an ethnicity. It can’t. Everyone from Mauritius is from somewhere else, or from many places at the same time.
Anson Brothers Studio, Fern Tree Gully, Hobart Town, Tasmania, 1887. Albumen print.
Collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
More famous men are wearing dresses, harking back to ancient times, when androgynous clothing was the norm. But for male dresses to truly take off they might need a style separate to women’s.
A mural of the Rainbow Serpent in the NSW town of Bourke, pictured in 2015.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
The Rainbow Serpent features in murals across the nation and as an Indigenous fairytale in books. But such images are often far removed from this Ancestral Being’s traditional ambivalent meanings.
Mary Elizabeth Shutler in Vanuatu, in the1960s. Permitted to join the first archaeological expedition to New Caledonia in 1952 as a ‘voluntary assistant’, she was the only French speaker and chief interlocuter with the Kanak people.
Family archives, reproduced with the kind authorisation of John Shutler & Susan Arter.
‘Wives’, volunteers, assistants: the vital contribution of women archaeologists has long been underplayed, if not erased. A new project uncovers trailblazers in the Pacific.
Birds have always been charged with carrying the burden of our feelings, writes Delia Falconer. Yet we’ve never treated these inscrutable, vivacious companions particularly well.
Kurt Cobain in April 1993, during a benefit concert in California.
AP Photo/Sam Morris
Confucius looked nothing like the great sage in his own time as he is widely known in ours. But his ideas continue to shape contemporary life for many.
Hoda Afshar’s exhibition Remain, The Substation, Melbourne, 2019.
Photograph by Leela Schauble. Courtesy the artist and The Substation, Melbourne
From the Intercolonial Exhibition in 1866 to a landmark show, a century later, in which Aboriginal photographers displayed their works, photography has shaped the nation.
Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train has sold 23 million copies, and the film adaptation was a box office smash.
DreamWorks Pictures/Universal Pictures via AP
There’s something disturbing about a story tracking a character’s mental decline for thrills. Happily, Paula Hawkins’ new novel, A Slow Fire Burning, joins a genre of books bucking this trend.
Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne