This blog post is a review of a new art exhibition at Camden’s Alan Baker Art Gallery that highlights the modernity and cosmopolitanism of the interwar period in an exhibition of artist Alan D Baker called ‘Alan’s Art Deco’.

The Norse poem Atlakviða shows an irregular metre which is difficult to classify. This makes it a useful test case for comparing the explanatory abilities of two major theoretical frameworks of Germanic alliterative verse: the positional theory and the word-foot theory. I argue that the word-foot theory is more successful, especially in deriving…[Read more]

Does “authorship” still have a place in the study of the Hebrew Bible? Historical criticism has long sought to uncover the human authors behind the biblical texts. But how might the “death of the author,” so forcefully declared by Roland Barthes over fifty years ago, change the contours of this search? This volume brings together leading experts…[Read more]

This work provides new insights into the relationship between the Holiness legislation in Leviticus 17–26 and processes of cultic centralization in the Persian period. The author departs from the classical theory that Leviticus 17–26 merely presume, with minor modifications, a concept of centralization articulated in Deuteronomy. She shows how Lev…[Read more]

Early Jewish writings are replete with narratives of warfare and collective violence. Yet relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to how these accounts of violence affected the way Jews structured their festal calendar. This essay examines the festivals described in 1 and 2 Maccabees that serve to commemorate the most impressive m…[Read more]

This Open Access volume reveals how violent pasts were constructed by ancient Mediterranean societies, the ideologies they served, and the socio-political processes and institutions they facilitated. Combining case studies from Anatolia, Egypt, Greece, Israel/Judah, and Rome, it moves beyond essentialist dichotomies such as “victors” and “va…[Read more]

This paper provides a background on the life and times of Graeme Clark, a founder of the area of biomedical engineering and the cochlear implant, who grew up in the small town of Camden, NSW.
The life and times of Professor Graeme Clark, the pioneer of the Cochlear Implant, are part of the Camden story. He was a local boy who made good, improved…[Read more]

Tras exponer una de las más influyentes críticas del victimismo en la cultura política tardomoderna, la de Wendy Brown, este capítulo analiza un incidente de confrontación discursiva, en torno al acoso sexual y la victimización, entre «nuevos» y «viejos» feminismos mexicanos, para concluir con una reflexión orientada a des-esencializar la condici…[Read more]

Historical Synergy: Mannheim holds that historical and political thought is determined by the socio-historical location of the thinker and the political aspirations and material ambitions of the group or groups to which he belongs.
2. Prehistoric Artic Hunter-Gatherer Synergy of Beliefs in Animal Spirits w/ Economic-Political Realities Erica Hill…[Read more]

I recently attended a theatre performance with a strong humanitarian message at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Surry Hills. The show was a combination of cabaret and drama, highlighting many historic social issues and challenges of the early 20th century that still resonate today. The show portrayed the life and times of African-American jazz…[Read more]

Research into emotions is a developing field within Assyriology, and NLP tools for Akkadian texts offers new perspectives on the data. We use PMI-based word embeddings to explore the relationship between parts of the body and emotions. Using data downloaded from Oracc, we ask which parts of the body were semantically linked to emotions. We do this…[Read more]

A Cultural History of the Sea in the Medieval Age, ed. by Elizabeth Lambourn.

The cultural history of the sea during the Middle Ages is a young and dynamic field. Born only recently in the literary criticism of European sources, this innovative volume pushes out beyond this European heartland to explore the shape and potential of a cultural…[Read more]

This article contributes to the story of festivals and their importance to local communities in New South Wales.
In September this year, a local history festival, Unlock Camden, was held in the community of Camden at
the beginning of History Week. In its fifth year, the festival has aimed to unlock the stories and images
of the local area and…[Read more]

This paper contributes to a project called Camdens Worldwide to mark the 400th anniversary of the death of the Elizabethan historian/antiquarian William Camden. It is a worldwide project to mark places called Camden conducted by the Camden History Society in the UK.
The establishment of Camden, New South Wales, the town in 1840, was a private…[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]

The Hebrew word “ruach” – the word connected to the idea-symbol of “spirit” translates alternately as “wind,” “breathe,” or “spirit.” In Arabic, there are two words for the words: spirit, soul or self – namely, ruH (spirit, soul) & nafs (spirit, soul, self). Both of these Arabic words are also connected to the ideas of breath or wind (e.g. ruH is…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

Este libro indaga en diferentes temas de la vida humana personal y social a la luz de Cristo. Su punto de partida es el acontecimiento de Jesús de Nazaret, y despliega sus implicaciones culturales, espirituales, sociales, éticas, políticas. Es original en la medida en que se dirige al mundo universitario, sin aceptar de antemano las re…[Read more]

Kongruenz, Sorge und Technologie. Tricks des Verschwindens: Dienstleistung als eine Kulturtechnik des Delegierens. #Syllabi und Schattenbibliotheken: Mittel der kollektiven Gestaltung. Eine durch das Wissen um ihre Werkzeuge und Quellen definierte Gemeinschaft werden.