Once again, country show societies are gearing up for the annual New South Wales Miss Showgirl competition. In 2008 500 young women entered the pageant at a local level representing 120 show societies, with the Sydney Royal Easter Show finals. The 2011 Camden Miss Showgirl has attracted seven young local women – four of the seven are university s…[Read more]

Abstract: “Broadcasting change: in empathic dialogue with Duffy and Jennings’s graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower,” analyzes the medium-specificity of the adaptation by applying a combined theoretical approach that incorporates cognitive narratology and narrative empathy. A discursive dialogue between the two media…[Read more]

This is a poem about fire.

This article invites the reading of Fernando Pessoa’s Fausto as a rhizomatic work, via three different critical lenses that lead to plurality: Traditions, Transcriptions, and Translations. Regarding different Faustian traditions, instead of seeing Pessoa’s Fausto merely as a competition with Goethe (as proposed by Eduardo Lourenço in his pref…[Read more]

The partition of British India into two sovereign independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947 was one of the most defining moments of the socio-political course of the sub-continent. The fight for independence from colonial rule and the rise of nationalism rooted in the religious discourse of two prominent religious communities- Hindus and…[Read more]

In central Camden is an empty bank building of understated significance at the intersection of John and Argyle Streets. This building was once the premises of Westpace, formerly the Bank of New South Wales, and was the second banking chamber on that site. Constructed in the 1930s by a prominent firm of Sydney architects, the building is of much…[Read more]

This is a thoroughly researched and readable book that provides a glimpse of life in western New South Wales during the late 19th and early 20th centuries through the eyes of a woman, Rachel Kennedy (1845-1930). The book is a wonderful contribution to female biography and regional community history, and illustrates the precarity of life for women…[Read more]

In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]