Pucelle : the epic of Joan of Arc

A thesis comprising a creative component in the form of an epic about the history of Joan of Arc and an exegetical component concerned with redefining the epic genre and exploring the author's project.

Sacred time after emigration : a study of the Holy Mother Festival in Zavoj

In Zavoj, a mountainous village in the Republic of Macedonia, the Day of the Holy Mother is the most significant day in the village's ritual calendar. The Day of the Holy Mother, like other holy days associated with saints, is a religious festival in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar; and Zavoj, like other villages, identifies with a particular holy day, in this case that of the Holy Mother. Festival is historically and etymologically linked to feast, a celebration in honour of gods, and the Day of the Holy Mother, like the two principal feasts in the Christian calendar, the Feast of Nativity of our Lord (Christmas) and the Feast of Resurrection (Easter), is a religious celebration that includes a feast in honour of the saint, traditionally as a breaking of a fast. Importantly, many Zavoj emigrants return to the village for the festival on the Day of the Holy Mother. Over recent years both village and the festival have been transformed, due to large and continuing emigration and the demise of the resident peasant generation. This chapter will examine the changes in the festival, comparing that of 1988, when the village was inhabited, with that of 2007, when there were only a few people resident and by which time many of the peasant generation had passed on. As a result of emigration the village is emptied of its inhabitants, yet it remains the site of, and destination for, the continuity of the annual festival.

From crystals to pixels: new technology in the documentary work of John Hughes

Film technology, in the broadest sense, embraces a vast array of knowledge, skills, tools, and systems. These include the codes and conventions of screen representation at the centre of much screen scholarship. The electro-mechanical tools of filmmaking are less often the focus of academic study than these codes and conventions, but they are central to them and to the daily work of artists and educators in the field of screen production. This paper traces the scope and significance of technical change, for independent film making, over the past four decades. Melbourne documentary filmmaker John Hughes provides a varied and expansive oeuvre through which to arrange an historical equipment list.

William Wardell's St John's College within the University of Sydney, 1858-59

Ursula wrote the essay for the catalogue of the Wardell Exhibition.

John Shaw Neilson : 'something of a mystic'

Competing post-Federation representations of mysticism as bold or passive, masculine or effeminate, dogmatic or independent, Australian or foreign, drove the shifting critical notions of this era culminating in the generalist designations of John Shaw Neilson (1872–1942) as Australia’s all-purpose mystical poet. Neilson is a mystical poet; yet the basis for this has been subject to a number of distortions from Neilson’s time until the late 1990s. This article examines how an understanding of both Western Christian mysticism and its often erroneous critical applications in Australia might inform new studies of the mystical Neilson.