This short-form article explores the various presentations of “the Middle” within Valentinian authored documents (the Gospel of Truth and Gospel of Philip) and sources which report about the Valentinians (Irenaeus and his report about Ptolemy’s theology). It suggests underscores the deep distinctions each view has and suggests that these may be…[Read more]

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]

Correspondences can be identified between (on the one hand) androcentric cosmogonies, ancestral misogyny and tribal blood rituals, and (on the other) the classical paradigm of vampirism, especially in its literary and on-screen flowering. Specifically, the initiatory culture-hero and the archetypal vampire both confer a haematologically-mediated…[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]

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.

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]

In comics: how ancient rabbis upend “traditional” ideas of reproduction, gender, and humanity. A blog post commissioned by UC Press Blog about the book When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis and the Reproduction of Species.

Link: htt…[Read more]

Glossing was an important element of medieval western manuscript culture. However, glosses are notoriously difficult to analyze because of their triviality, fluid nature, heterogeneity of origin, complex transmission histories, and anonymity. Traditional scholarly approaches such as close reading and the genealogical method often do not produce…[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]

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]

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 trend of Carolingian royal advice literature, Fürstenspiegel, or specula principum offers advice to kings on how to rule well and examples of ruling poorly. Interpretations of these texts have often focused on traditional ideas of the Carolingian reforms, for example the focus on classical models of rule in Sedulius Scottus’ De rectoribus ch…[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]

More detailed discussions on Thomas Biggs: Sown Men and Rome’s Civil Wars. Rethinking the End of Melinno’s Hymn to Rome (Mnemosyne 76.3) and Gerlinde Bretzigheimer: Intertextualität und Intratextualität in Ausonius’ Epitaphia heroum (Wiener Studien 135).