The Departed: Italian Migration and the American Mafia
Seminar
Massimo Anelli, Paolo Pinotti and Zachary Porreca documented the transplantation of the Sicilian Mafia to the United States in the 1920s, when a large-scale repression campaign in Italy targeted Mafia strongholds and forced many Mafiosi to migrate, and study the resulting short- and long-term…
Tribal Visuality and the Politics of Indigenous Art: 'Mary Sully: Native Modern' Revisited - Allan Martin Lecture
Lecture
In 2024, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art launched a reclamation of the artistic career of Mary Sully, a reclusive, previously unacknowledged Dakota artist active between the late 1920s and mid-1940s. The processes of conservation, curation, and exhibition revealed new dimensions of the work,…
The Year the Stars Fell: The Great Leonid Meteor Storm of 1833 and the Problem of Meaning in Antebellum America.
Lecture/seminar
On November 12, 1833, residents of North America witnessed over 100,000 visible meteors falling over the course of four hours. They woke their families and neighbours, creating a shared, continent-wide experience of epistemological crisis—for though the science of astronomy had made…
Artificial Intelligence, False Information, Trust in Elections and Satisfaction with Democracy in Australia
Lecture/seminar
The proliferation of false information and the rapid diffusion of generative artificial intelligence (AI) pose mounting challenges to democracy. Deepfakes, synthetic news, and AI-powered personalised political advertising are reshaping information ecosystems, raising concerns about how citizens…
What the Tortoise Told The Skeptic
Seminar
Over forty years ago, Saul Kripke did the unthinkable — producing an exposition of Wittgenstein's Rule-Following Argument that was actually intelligible. More than that, it was interesting as well. In this talk, Drew Khlentzos will discuss Ludwig Wittgenstein's Skeptical Paradox about rule-…
History, Country, and Community: A Celebration of Ann McGrath
Symposium
We are delighted to invite you to History, Country, and Community: A Celebration of Ann McGrath — a free public symposium honouring the scholarship of Professor Ann McGrath, a foundational figure in Australian history whose work on First Nations histories, cross-cultural encounters, and the…
The Stained Man: A Crime, a Scandal, and the Making of a Nation, by Patrick Mullins
Book launch
The Stained Man: A Crime, a Scandal, and the Making of a Nation (Scribe, 2026) tells the story of Richard 'Dick' Meagher, the Sydney solicitor who incited a campaign to free a man he knew was guilty of attempted murder and subsequently lost it all, including his reputation and ability to…