How can historians of small spaces and cities focus on local events and issues and at the same time carry on conversations with peers in a disciplinar... [more]
Building on recent works that question a simplistic, White narrative of the history of academic oral history, this article focuses on the labors of Bl... [more]
In this paper I explore the construction of a clinical continuum between a genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF), and male infertility. I provide a brief outline of the history of cystic fibrosis and its association with male infertility, before examining
Recent erasion in arid regions of western NSW has exposed large areas that are scattered with stone artefacts manufactured by Aboriginal people in prehistory. These exposures offer an opportunity for archaeologists to study the artefacts abandoned by Abor
Einstein proclaimed that we could discover true laws of nature by seeking those with the simplest mathematical formulation. He came to this viewpoint later in his life. In his early years and work he was quite hostile to this idea. Einstein did not develo
The microchemistry of the black gloss decoration layer on black- and red-figured Attic vases (6th to 4th century BC) has been studied by means of selected-area x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive spect
Heidegger's Destruktion of the metaphysical tradition leads him to the view that all Western metaphysical systems make foundational claims best understood as 'ontotheological'. Metaphysics establishes the conceptual parameters of intelligibility by ont
This article investigates the changing currency of racial politics in jazz music formations, with a comparative focus on Nazi and contemporary Germany. While it is noted that music articulates politics in an oblique or metonymic way, in highly-charged con
Between 1946 and 1960, a new phenomenon emerged in the field of bacteriology. Bacterial sex,'' as it was called, revolutionized the study of genetics, largely by making available a whole new class of cheap, fast-growing, and easily manipulated organisms
Oral history materials from the South Wales Miners' Library are used to examine the communal understandings of, and collective responses to, the scourge of Miners' Lung (pneumoconiosis) in the 1920s and 1930s. Lay epidemiology in mining communities attr
Cucurbita spp. (squashes and gourds), together with bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), were among the earliest plants manipulated and domesticated in the Americas. Although at least one squash species, Cucurbita moschata, was domesticated in the lowland
Since the early 1980s historians and others have been radically revising established understandings of the Italian south. New research has undermined the notion of a dichotomy between north and south and has begun to challenge the parameters of the Southe
Ideas about the natural world are intertwined with the personalities, practices, and the workplaces of scientists. The relationships between these categories are explored in the life of the taxonomist William Steel Creighton. Creighton studied taxonomy un
The life of Raimondo 'Palmario' of Piacenza (d. 1200) has been preserved in a seventeenth century Latin retranslation of an Italian translation of the original written by Master Rufino in 1212. There seems little reason, however, to doubt its authentici
The character of early medieval medical manuscripts makes it difficult to generalize about the nature of medical knowledge in this period. In order to reconstitute one field of medical science, namely diagnosis and prognosis, while avoiding the pitfalls o
This essay revisits a debate that took place in the social sciences over the sacred-cow controversy for the purpose of ecological musing. The debate was stimulated largely by Marvin Harris, whose cultural materialist position reduced the symbolism of the
This article takes as its point of departure the publication in Crepuscolo, a Milanese journal edited by Carlo Tenca, of Cattaneo's 1858 essay on the role of cities in Italian history. Among the issues faced by those seeking to forge an Italian nation in