This chapter examines the reception of the American ‘flapper’ model and how it was interpreted and translated into the interwar Romanian fashion and beauty discourse, into the 1920s model termed as the ‘modern girl’, as opposed to the ‘new woman’ of the 1930s. It follows the evolution of 1920s styles, including Jazz and Hollywood cultures, J…[Read more]

This newspaper article tells the story of a First World War patriotic fund, the Princess Mary Christmas Fund, launched in 1914. Princess Mary, the daughter of King George V and Queen Mary, aimed to raise enough funds to ensure that ‘every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front’ received a Christmas present in the form of a small keepsake…[Read more]

This article briefly examines the ideology of motherhood in the small country town of Camden, NSW.
Around the turn of the century in 1900, a direct link was made between infant welfare, motherhood, patriotism and nationalism. Motherhood and mothering were expressed in terms of patriotism and a national priority. All were driven by European…[Read more]

This blog post explores the story of a memorial plaque to Jennifer Eggins in Camden, NSW.
Outside John Oxley Cottage, Camden Visitor Information Centre at 46 Camden Valley Way Elderslie, is a memorial plaque with a story to tell of local identity, Jennifer Eggins, and her legacy that still echoes across the district. She was one of the founders…[Read more]

This paper explores Romanian women’s influence on US fashion as representatives of European artistic, cultural, and social elites and as genuine Parisiennes. This study treats the Parisienne model as a symbolic marker of elegance driven by French, namely Parisian, aesthetic philosophies, and technical prowess. In this sense, Romanian women f…[Read more]

This article examines the conflicting representations of plasticity and epigenetics in the work of philosopher Catherine Malabou and evolutionary theorists Mary Jane West-Eberhard and Eva Jablonka. Malabou effaces the unsettled debates within the life sciences in order to speak of a new biological ‘paradigm’ and to attribute values of novelty or…[Read more]

The story of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is adapted and revised by James Ijames in his play Fat Ham, which ran from 12 May to 31 July 2022 at The Public Theater, coproduced by the National Black Theatre. Ijames’s play, which won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for drama, plays with and departs from the plot of Hamlet to explore Black manhood, the fam…[Read more]

Chapter: Reflections of a Non-Binary Asian American in LIS. Book description (Litwin Books & Library Juice Press): In the library profession, and in the world as a whole, the experiences of trans and gender diverse people often go unnoticed, hidden, and ignored. But we are here. Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries is entirely written and…[Read more]

This paper contributes to the history of small communities in Australia by examining the life and times of a local pharmacist and his wife in a small country town, the business they ran and their contribution to the local community. Colin and Dorothy Clark were local identities and made a significant contribution to the Camden community. Colin as…[Read more]

Beards were part of a visual matrix of expressing masculinity during the NeoAssyrian period (ca. 934–612 BCE). But masculinity does not exist in isolation and interacts with other aspects of identity. I will examine the beard as an indicator of masculine status during the Neo-Assyrian period. This will be done through investigating the visual a…[Read more]

During the Neo-Assyrian period (approximately 934-612 BCE, based in modern Iraq) the annals and royal inscriptions of several kings mention women with a curious title: ‘Queen of the Arabs’. These women have been included in previous discussions regarding Assyrian interaction with the ‘Arabs’, but a full investigation into their roles as rulers…[Read more]

The role of the internet in fomenting male supremacist ideology must be understood within the larger cultural context that undergirds and naturalizes such rhetoric. Traditional conservative (TradCon) sections of the manosphere valorize a patriarchal social order centering traditional gender roles. According to TradCon reasoning, men, under attack…[Read more]

‘There is no truth, only perception of truth’, and that perception too changes with time. Lysistrata is one such text where this difference of perception prevails. Written by Aristophanes in 411 BCE, Lysistrata is one of the eleven Old Greek Comedy plays surviving out of forty-two. The play revolves around the Peleponnesian war, when women hav…[Read more]

This is pre-publication preview introduces the major questions, methods, and insights of my book When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis & the Reproduction of Species (UC Press, 2023).

This paper explores the dynamics of women’s fashion marketing in advertisements and promotional materials related to Western ideas, materials or products. It will analyse published promotional visual and written texts in the interwar Bucharest press, with local or national distribution. The aim is to ascertain the degree and nature of Western w…[Read more]

“The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope published in 1712 is a mock-heroic narrative which satirically
glorifies trivial incident of cutting of locks of protagonist Belinda. This poem was written in the
Augustan Era (1660-1784) which is marked by the period of scientific reason and rationality, whose
effect can be seen on the writers of those…[Read more]

This book brings together thirteen contributors from diverse backgrounds – mean and women born in Cameroon, England, Scotland, South Africa, Zambia. What they all have in common is years of service within their respective communities, working individually and within projects and programmes, with both young people and adults to build social c…[Read more]

In this short article I argue that the UK government’s decision not to update the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) is more than a missed opportunity. It weaponises the GRA, now an effective instrument of assimilation and containment. The failure to reform the GRA seems like a maintenance of the status quo, but given that the circumstances have s…[Read more]

The newly formed Greater Romania engaged in a process of modernization, with Bucharest as its flagship metropolis, striving to be recognized internationally and reach economic stability. Women’s fashion became a marker in substantiating Romania’s self-assertion as a modern state, with great emphasis on creating a viable textile industry. This occ…[Read more]

This paper examines the influence of urban fashion ideas disseminated worldwide from France and how they impacted the Romanian ideas of style and beauty, as well as the nature of the communication between Paris and the Little Paris. My aim is to decode the interwar Romanian interpretation of the new woman notion and assess what type of role…[Read more]