Christopher Daniel Sullivan The case for an Australian folk music tradition, PhD thesis, Southern Cross University, 2020 (available on open access, including music files) Using new and more comprehensive sources this thesis re-interprets the evidence for an Australian folk music…

Ian Lilley & Celmara Pocock ‘Australia’s problem with Aboriginal World Heritage‘, The Conversation, 13 December 2018 Of 19 World Heritage sites across the country, including such wonders as the Great Barrier Reef and the Sydney Opera House, only two, Kakadu…

Meredith Lake The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History, NewSouth, Sydney, 2018 In this surprising and revelatory history of the Bible in Australia, Meredith Lake gets under the skin of a text that’s been read, wrestled with, preached and tattooed,…

Stuart Piggin & Robert D. Linder The Fountain of Public Prosperity: Evangelical Christians in Australian History 1740–1914, Monash University Publishing, Melbourne, 2018 The official religion brought to Australia with the First Fleet was Evangelical Christianity, the “vital religion” then shaping…

Robyn J. Whitaker ‘How the Bible helped shape Australian culture‘, The Conversation, 15 May 2018 Discusses Meredith Lake’s new book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History. Time and time again, Lake traces the multiplicity of biblical interpretations and applications to…

Claire Bowern ‘The origins of Pama-Nyungan, Australia’s largest family of Aboriginal languages‘, The Conversation, 13 March 2018 The approximately 400 languages of Aboriginal Australia can be grouped into 27 different families. To put that diversity in context, Europe has just four…

Black Inc. The Wisdom of Oz: Australian Aphorisms from the Profound to the Profane, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2017 A little book about truth, in a world defined by insidious lies. The Wisdom of Oz presents the finest pearls of wisdom from…

Emily Gallagher ‘“Bang, bang, bang!”: the shock of a boy playing with a gun on a suburban street‘, The Conversation, 25 October 2017 A perceptive brief survey of the changing patterns of children’s urban play in Australia. Over the last…

Aaron Corn ‘Friday essay: Dr Joe Gumbula, the ancestral chorus, and how we value Indigenous knowledges‘, The Conversation, 29 September 2017 An edited version of the Dr Joe Gumbula Memorial Lecture presented at the 16th Symposium on Indigenous Music and…

Geoffrey Winter* ‘AFL Aficionados!! Not many people know this’, Honest History, 15 June 2017 Jock McHale (Wikipedia) In 120 years of VFL-AFL premiership competition (1897-2016), 25 coaches have led their clubs to just one premiership each. Another 25 coaches have…

Sally Breen ‘Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there‘, The Conversation, 9 June 2017 Review of – and thoughts provoked by – a new exhibition, Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s, at the National…

Joanna Mendelssohn ‘Defying Empire: the legacy of 1967‘, The Conversation, 26 May 2017 Review of National Gallery of Australia exhibition on till 10 September. ‘Curator Tina Baum has woven a narrative and an argument around the legacy of that remarkable…

Jane Goodall ‘Waking up a quiet country, five nights a week‘, Inside Story, 13 April 2017 Is it really 50 years since This Day Tonight started? The late Bill Peach, TDT’s first compere, had a good grasp on the significance…

Rob Hess ‘Growth of women’s football has been a 100-year revolution – it didn’t happen overnight‘, The Conversation, 3 February 2017 Marks the commencement of the Australian Football League Women’s competition. Hess is co-author with Brunette Lenkić of Play On!…

Monthly, The ‘Moran Prize finalists: finalists for the 2016 Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize‘, The Monthly, 24 October 2016 Something restful for the weekend, and not behind The Monthly‘s fierce pay-wall. (It has some good stuff, though.) There are about 30…

Roberts, Rhoda ‘There is no Aboriginal disadvantage. Our culture is our advantage, and all Australians can share it‘, Guardian Australia, 7 October 2016 Article written to accompany Homeground cultural festival in Sydney. We have over 700 languages and dialects and…

Haigh, Gideon Stroke of Genius: Victor Trumper and the Shot that Changed Cricket, Penguin Random House, Sydney, 2016 If Trumper is a legend, George Beldam’s ‘Jumping Out’ has become an icon. But that image has almost paradoxically obscured the story…

Gaita, Raimond ‘Friday essay: reflections on the idea of a common humanity‘, The Conversation, 12 August 2016 Gaita argues that ‘to recognise the humanity of others we must rise to the humanity in ourselves, but to do that we must…

Acquroff, Nick ‘Westography: images of a vanished suburbia‘, Broadsheet, 5 July 2016 This is a story about a book of photographs, Westography, by Warren Kirk. The pictures are taken around the inner western suburbs of Melbourne. There are a dozen…

Doyle, Brian ‘The national sport‘, The American Scholar, 15 April 2016 An American offers a note on Australian football – and does it in one long, lyrical paragraph. He is from the Pacific North-West so perhaps we should expect this.…

Mendelssohn, Joanna ‘Breaking the silence: Australia must acknowledge a violent past‘, The Conversation, 7 March 2016 Review of the exhibition, ‘When silence falls‘, at the Art Gallery of NSW till 1 May. From the northern tip of Cape York to…

Gillespie, Mark ‘Friday essay: on the Sydney Mardi Gras march of 1978‘, The Conversation, 19 February 2016 updated Considers whether the original Mardi Gras marchers should get a formal apology. A motion calling for an apology was adopted unanimously in…

O’ Regan, Tom ‘Kenneth Slessor goes to the movies‘, Inside Story, 4 January 2016 Renowned Australian poet and war correspondent, Kenneth Slessor, also liked going to ‘the pictures’ and writing about it in a special way, according to O’Regan in…

Vaughan, Jill, Katie Jepson & Rosey Billington ‘Togs or swimmers? Why Australians use different words to describe the same things‘, The Conversation, 5 January 2016 Uses maps to show the different words used by Australians to describe common items. It’s…

Grishin, Sasha ‘Art review: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 2015 Reviews the recently opened exhibition, which is open until March 2016. The chief aim of this exhibition is to take a fresh…

Hardie, Giles ‘Why Australians are addicted to family dramas‘, New Daily, 7 October 2015 Summaries of 40 years of the ‘most iconic’ Australian TV soap operas. As a country, we’ve long loved drama series but our family dramas have a special…

Delaney, Brigid ‘Cold Chisel: writing Australia’s unofficial national anthems since 1973‘, Guardian Australia, 6 October 2015 Historical look at the songs of an Australian rock band. Cold Chisel’s lyrics always felt like stories – Carveresque with an Australian accent –…

[Manne, Anne, Robyn Davidson & Raimond Gaita] ‘Words and images: Robyn Davidson and Raimond Gaita on film adaptation‘, The Monthly, 21 September 2015 In this La Trobe University Ideas and Society event at the Bendigo Writers Festival 2015, authors Robyn…

James, Clive Latest Readings, Yale University Press, New Haven CT & London, 2015 In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that “if you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as…

Kidd, Briony ‘Reading between the credits for Australian women directors‘, SBS Movies, 14 July 2015 Asks why women film-makers are consistently overlooked in Australian cinema. Examines possible answers to this question, looks at some history, discusses the work of many…

Torre, Dan ‘From ads to Oscar winners: a century of Australian animation‘, The Conversation, 26 June 2015 2015 is one hundred years since Harry Julius began ‘Cartoons of the Moment’, animations accompanying feature films shown in Australia and New Zealand.…

Moore, Tony ‘Larrikin carnival: an Australian style of cultural subversion‘, The Conversation, 23 June 2015 The article is based on an essay in the collection On Happiness, which launched this month. I want to recast happiness as a form of…

Curby, Pauline ‘An urban myth or surfing history?‘, Honest History, 17 June 2015 The author explores the story surrounding a famous change to the rules regarding sea-bathing in pre-Great War Sydney. As this story is part of our surfing history,…

Meyrick, Julian ‘Australian plays: how to persuade a nation to question its own soul?‘ The Conversation, 12 May 2015 The fourth in a series of long essays on Australian play-writing. The earlier ones are linked from this article. I could…

McQueen, Humphrey ‘The novels of Eleanor Dark’, Hemisphere, 17, 1, January 1973, pp. 38-41 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) The piece is interesting as a relatively early discussion of this writer (1901-85) and as an indication…

Daley, Paul ‘”It taunts us spiritually”: the fight for Indigenous relics spirited off to the UK‘, Guardian Australia, 14 February 2015 Updates the battle by Indigenous Australians to return to Australia relics taken to England by collectors in the nineteenth…

Hynd, Doug ‘“Religion” and “the sacred”: a note for historians following the Martin Place siege‘, Honest History, 18 January 2015 The author briefly traces the connections between religion and violence and between the secular and the sacred. He includes some…

Hawkings, Rebecca ‘Keating’s Creative Nation: a policy document that changed us‘, The Conversation, 30 October 2014 Article marking the 20th anniversary of Creative Nation, which injected $252 million of new spending into the arts and culture and had a profound…

Blackwood, Gemma ‘Pass the iced vo-vos: the resurrection of Australiana‘, The Conversation, 26 November 2014 The author notes an emerging trend in Australian popular cultural forms, involving a reinvigorated interest in Australiana – material visual culture that is visually themed…

Manley, Ken R. & Barbara J. Coe The Grace of Goodness: John Saunders – Baptist Pastor and Activist, Sydney 1834-1848,  Greenwood Press in association with Baptist Historical Society of NSW, Macquarie Park, NSW, 2014 Rev John Saunders (1806-59) was the…

ABC Radio National ‘News dissemination in colonial Sydney‘, Media Report, 28 August 2014 Podcast (eight minutes) in which Richard Aedy and Grace Karskens discuss dissemination by word of mouth, government notices stuck on trees, ships from Britain, communication between Indigenous…

Allam, Lorena, et al ‘Public intimacies: The Royal Commission on Human Relationships‘, ABC Radio National, 28 April 2013 ABC program (audio only) discussing the work of a ground-breaking 1970s inquiry, presented by Lorena Allam, produced by Professor Michelle Arrow and…

Lord, John ‘The history of comics in Australia‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 29 August 2014 Brief article covering early comic strips in The Bulletin and elsewhere, imported comics and the first Australian produced comic in 1931. They provided artists like…

Starck, Nigel ‘Celebrity blows: Anthony Trollope and those touchy colonials‘, The Conversation, 1 September 2014 Describes the visits to Australia of Trollope, novelist and said to be our first celebrity blow-in. He ‘found Australian pride could be easily hurt’ but we…

Leslie, Tim ‘The changing face of the Archibald‘, ABC News, 10 July 2014 and updated Update: 2014 Archibald Prize won by a woman (Fiona Lowry) for a portrait of a woman (Penelope Seidler). About half this year’s entrants were women…

Patrick, Rhianna ‘Indigenous authors explore Twitter fiction and new literary genres,’ AWAYE! ABC Radio National, 27 June 2014 Audio and text about the changes in Indigenous literature in the last 30 years, from life story and memoir in the 1980s…

Ravenscroft, Alison ‘The strangeness of the dance: Kate Grenville, Rohan Wilson, Inga Clendinnen and Kim Scott’, Meanjin, 72, 4, Summer 2013, pp. 64-73 The author discusses three recent Australian novels and the way that they interact very specifically with the…

Rickard, John ‘Sentimental blokes’, Meanjin, 66, 1, Autumn 2007, pp. 38-46 The author examines the homoerotic elements to the myth of Australian mateship and the way that this plays out in various literary representations, as well as in terms of…

Wetherell, Rodney ‘Subtopia or sunnyside?’, Meanjin, 65, 2, Winter 2006, pp. 174-80 The author considers representations of Melbourne in literature throughout history, focusing on AL McCann’s novel Subtopia and Sunnyside by Joanna Murray-Smith. He also reflects upon the way that…

Laugesen, Amanda Convict Words: Language in early Colonial Australia, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, 2002 This book explores the language of the Australian convict era, taking the form of a dictionary with supporting quotations from contemporary texts, including newspapers, government…

Ross, Liz Revolution is For Us: The Left and Gay Liberation in Australia, Interventions, Brunswick, Vic., 2013 It was the Left which championed revolution, which had a theory and practice of revolution – Marxism. But when it comes to Gay…

White, Richard Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688-1980, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 1981 Pioneering work in Australian cultural history, roughly chronological but also thematic. “To be Australian”: what can that mean? Inventing Australia sets out to find the…

White, Richard with Sarah-Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown, Meredith Lake, Patricia Leehy and Lila Oldmeadow On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, Pluto Press, North Melbourne, Vic., 2005 Describes chronologically from 1768 ‘the Australian experience of going on holidays…

Henry, Nicola & Karolina Kurzak with Charles Sherlock ‘Religion in Australia‘, The Australian Collaboration: A Collaboration of National Community Organisations (October 2012) Factsheet on religious affiliations (including Australian Bureau of Statistics figures summarised), interfaith developments and the place of religion…

Waterhouse, Richard Private Pleasures, Public Leisure: A History of Australian Popular Culture since 1788, Longman Australia, South Melbourne, Vic., 1995 How do we define culture? And how do we specify popular culture? Private Pleasures, Public Leisure, the first general history…

Garner, Bill Born in a Tent: How Camping Makes Us Australian, New South, Sydney, 2013 The sub-title emphasises the multifarious influences on Australia and Australians. The author shows that the history of Australia can be told through a history of…

Altman, Dennis The End of the Homosexual, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 2013 The book ‘connects what has happened within the changing queer world over the past forty years to larger social, political and cultural trends. This is…

Bongiorno, Frank The Sex Lives of Australians, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2012 ‘Cross-dressing colonists, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes – here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day. ‘ The book shows how…

Featherstone, Lisa Let’s Talk about Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 2011 Covering the period to 1961, the book ‘explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in…

Vance Palmer The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1963; first published 1954; later editions Classic study of the contribution of the culture of the 1890s to the formation of an Australian national identity.

Altman, Dennis Defying Gravity: A Political Life, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1997; Australian Public Intellectuals Network, Perth, 2004 Altman has been a gay activist and writer for more than four decades.

Dennis Altman ‘From a drowning to a celebration’, Inside Story, 11 December 2012 Edited version of a Dunstan Lecture, describing forty years of gender politics in Australia.