Reliance on the support of others after an accident showed philosopher David Newheiser the power of solidarity. We need a similar sense of communal connection in our approach to COVID, he writes.
In 1881, a Pacific Islander woman brought here to work on a sugar cane plantation ran away. She was violently retrieved by her employer. Her story sheds moving light on a dark history of exploitation.
Old women remain the butt of jokes; they are some of society’s most marginalised people. But age also invites us to become our most authentic selves, writes Carol Lefevre.
How do you write a poem with someone else? John Kinsella has collaborated with musician Thurston Moore, Yamaji poet Charmaine Papertalk Green and Ghanaian-Jamaican Kwame Dawes. He offers some clues.
A close friend of John Curtin, Dame Mary Gilmore wrote poems on topics such as colonial violence and the plight of the koala. How has her great, great nephew, Scott Morrison, chosen to remember her?
Australia’s political economy was built on the primacy of (white) male labor, male power and male control, writes Julianne Schultz. Women have changed this culture - but still risk abuse when speaking out.
Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel transformed women’s fashion across the world: how do we recognise her complex background, difficult choices and ongoing legacy?
Women were always important to the Beatles, yet Yoko Ono, in particular, faced extreme criticism for partnering with John Lennon. How does Peter Jackson’s Get Back present Ono and Linda Eastman?
My family is Mauritian, but when I take a DNA test, Mauritian didn’t even rank as an ethnicity. It can’t. Everyone from Mauritius is from somewhere else, or from many places at the same time.
More famous men are wearing dresses, harking back to ancient times, when androgynous clothing was the norm. But for male dresses to truly take off they might need a style separate to women’s.
The Rainbow Serpent features in murals across the nation and as an Indigenous fairytale in books. But such images are often far removed from this Ancestral Being’s traditional ambivalent meanings.
‘Wives’, volunteers, assistants: the vital contribution of women archaeologists has long been underplayed, if not erased. A new project uncovers trailblazers in the Pacific.
Birds have always been charged with carrying the burden of our feelings, writes Delia Falconer. Yet we’ve never treated these inscrutable, vivacious companions particularly well.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne