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]

Comprised of soft glacial cliffs and sandy beaches, the southeastern coastline of Ireland is dominated by unconsolidated Quaternary-aged sediments with fewer rock exposures than Ireland’s other coasts. Facing Britain across a rough sea, County Wexford has been prone to incursions from both political and environmental forces throughout history. T…[Read more]

This biography of the German medical doctor and minerologist Diederich Wessel Linden (fl.1745-1768; d.1769) is the unabridged, pre-publication version of an accepted and revised article for publication in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography. This version is also available as an online blog post:…[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]

In Camden, NSW, every November, the streets are ablaze with shades of purple. Walking around the town’s streets, you will see the current flush of purples, mauves, lilac and lavender along Argyle Street, Broughton Street, John Street and Macarthur Park. People are entranced by the magic of the town’s ‘sea of lavender’ as Peter Butler from…[Read more]

This article explores the co-constitution of networks and infrastructure in the context of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture. We consider Maria Edgeworth’s conceptualization of the term network with and alongside infrastructure in her Harry and Lucy stories (1801–25) and offer an analysis of a manuscript tour by Mary Anne Eade fro…[Read more]

The 2007 Camden Library and Camden Museum redevelopment project resulted in a community collaboration to create a mix of public artworks.
Camden Council Cultural Development Coordinator Angela Pasqua led the collaboration process. Participants included school children, TAFE students, artists and sculptors.
Camden Council commissioned the…[Read more]

The Narellan Heritage Walking Tour is an interesting and informative way to observe and learn about the history and heritage of this Cowpastures village.
First published in 2010 by photographers Kylie and Peter Lyons.

This publication is part of the project “Ricontrans – Visual Culture, Piety and Propaganda. Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean (16th to Early 20th Century)”, funded from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant…[Read more]

This article contributes to understanding regionalism by using a case study of the Camden district.
It is now hard to imagine now, but in days gone by, the township of Camden was the centre of a large district. The Camden district became the centre of people’s daily lives for over a century and the basis of their sense of place and community i…[Read more]

This blog post is a review of a new art exhibition at Camden’s Alan Baker Art Gallery that highlights the modernity and cosmopolitanism of the interwar period in an exhibition of artist Alan D Baker called ‘Alan’s Art Deco’.

This paper provides a background on the life and times of Graeme Clark, a founder of the area of biomedical engineering and the cochlear implant, who grew up in the small town of Camden, NSW.
The life and times of Professor Graeme Clark, the pioneer of the Cochlear Implant, are part of the Camden story. He was a local boy who made good, improved…[Read more]

I recently attended a theatre performance with a strong humanitarian message at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Surry Hills. The show was a combination of cabaret and drama, highlighting many historic social issues and challenges of the early 20th century that still resonate today. The show portrayed the life and times of African-American jazz…[Read more]

Research into emotions is a developing field within Assyriology, and NLP tools for Akkadian texts offers new perspectives on the data. We use PMI-based word embeddings to explore the relationship between parts of the body and emotions. Using data downloaded from Oracc, we ask which parts of the body were semantically linked to emotions. We do this…[Read more]

A Cultural History of the Sea in the Medieval Age, ed. by Elizabeth Lambourn.

The cultural history of the sea during the Middle Ages is a young and dynamic field. Born only recently in the literary criticism of European sources, this innovative volume pushes out beyond this European heartland to explore the shape and potential of a cultural…[Read more]

This article contributes to the story of festivals and their importance to local communities in New South Wales.
In September this year, a local history festival, Unlock Camden, was held in the community of Camden at
the beginning of History Week. In its fifth year, the festival has aimed to unlock the stories and images
of the local area and…[Read more]