The act of classification has the widest implications for scholarship. Whatever the format, it involves the totality of our being. The use of our eyes indicates that decisions about whatever it is that we observe have already been made. Yet the interaction between the mechanical act of seeing and the mind or memory has rarely been registered. An…[Read more]

Some thoughts on Boris Eldagsen’s Image, well ‘photograph’, an AI generated image.

Review of the literature on pictograph sites in the Canadian Shield with specific reference to those found in the Lake of the Woods, in north-western Ontario, Canada.

This article argues that the analysis of a threedimensional image demanded a three-dimensional approach. The authors realise that discussions of images and image processing inveterately conceptualise representation as being flat, static, and finite. The authors recognise the need for a fresh acuteness to three-dimensionality as a meaningful – a…[Read more]

This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project

This blog post gives an overview of the Camden Material and Colour Guide. The guide provides property owners of heritage buildings in the Camden Heritage Conservation Area with tips and hints on restoration and conservation of their houses. The guide provides colour schemes on building exteriors and interiors by housing styles between 1840 and…[Read more]

Abstract: The causes of suffering are a central topic in Buddhism as well as in Ayurveda. The Pāli Canon and other early Buddhist texts like the Milindapañha mention eight specific causes resulting in disease or suffering at several places. In contrast, early Ayurveda, as presented in the Carakasaṃhitā, knows a threefold causal complex of dise…[Read more]

At Christmas, Christians celebrate that Jesus was born on December 25 as the son of God andthe Virgin Mary. But this event is not unique. In this article, I show that the birth of Jesus hasseveral non-Christian predecessors, whereby various elements of the ritual dynamics have beenChristianized and implemented into the figure we know today as Jesus Christ.

In this essay, we share how a small, independent, academic open access (OA) press, punctum books, has survived and can maybe thrive financially, but also in terms of human quality of life dividends, in the very precarious landscape of making and funding open books. Tracing the history of the press and our bumpy road to better financial…[Read more]

The term “alchemy,” born out of early modern professional polemics among chemists, is problematic as a historical category. The present article shifts away from asking what pre-modern alchemy “really” was, to asking how medieval scholars writing in Greek and Arabic thought about the practice of treating and combining naturally occurring substan…[Read more]

This blog post is about a spring festival in Camden, NSW, called Celebrate Camden.
The brainchild of Vicki Sutherland from the Camden Chamber of Commerce, it aimed to promote Camden as a viable tourist and shopping destination.
The festival had mixed success and was held in 1994 and 1995, to be replaced by the Cowpastures Bicentennial.

All around the community in the Macarthur region are cultural artefacts that are representations of the settler-colonial narrative of the Cowpastures, which was variously a colonial frontier, a government reserve, and a formal region.
Today, the material culture of the Cowpastures is hidden in plain sight and appears to have been ‘forgotten’ by…[Read more]

This is a preprint of the Conclusion to a book called A History of Camden Chinese Market Gardeners 1899-1993 edited by Ian Willis and others

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 essay derives from a conference paper in Spanish titled Figuras de Epimeteo, which revisited interpretations of the Greek myth of Epimetheus, the forgetful brother of Prometheus and the forgotten husband of Pandora. Ivan Illich (1922-2002) and Bernard Stiegler (1952-2020) borrowed the figure of Epimetheus in the process of elaborating an…[Read more]

Recent scholarly work has focused on the erasure and mistreatment of bisexuality in histories of sexuality. Such erasure is not only observed in academic work but also in the lived experiences of people who identify as plurisexuals. The present paper brings together studies on bisexuality, hegemony, and sexual politics to explain the discursively…[Read more]