Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site
Forgot your password?
Subscribe

Search Results: ghosts

  • AUSTRALIA

    The Americanisation of Australia's universities

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 10 November 2014
    23 Comments

    The US, whose citizens owe more on student loans than they do on credit cards, is the land of deregulation. Australia’s Education Minister Christopher Pyne has the support of university management in his desire to see Australia to follow the US path. But it is clear to lecturers, tutors and researchers that this will only create more inequality, mainly by forcing people without money to either miss out all together on higher education or go into a huge amount of debt.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Looking for depth in the selfie

    • Ellena Savage
    • 31 October 2014
    4 Comments

    I take a lot of selfies. Some of them are silly, coquettish, dramatic. Others are just my face looking into my computer, sitting where I work, dressed in work clothes. They mean more or less nothing. They’re just an inane collection of data on my laptop, or too easy self-portraits. Nothing means nothing, but it says something about the culture. 

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    An ode to thunder

    • Rory Harris
    • 28 October 2014
    2 Comments

    you rattled the night around kitchen tables, water glasses filled with new wine healing history, roses on your cheeks & thunder in your heart

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Japanese pilgrim enters the void

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 01 August 2014
    3 Comments

    In his native Japan, the name Haruki Murakami has immense currency. In the first week of its release his latest novel Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage sold more than one million copies. Coming from a traditional culture where assimilation and social order has been a historical imperative, perhaps the book's themes go beyond the intimate to acknowledge the soul-eating, conformist nature of society.

    READ MORE
  • INTERNATIONAL

    Gerry Adams arrest inflames ghosts of Ireland's past

    • Brian Lennon
    • 07 May 2014
    9 Comments

    My uncle, Michael Lennon, fought with Eamon DeValera in Boland's Mill in Dublin during the 1916 Rising. Gerry Adams, President of Sinn Fein, sees himself as Michael's successor. But 98 years after the Rising, Adams was last week arrested for questioning about the 1972 murder of Jean McConville. Republicans allege that the timing of the arrest was politically motivated. At the root of all this lies the problem of the past: how do we deal with it?

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Dickens' song for the poor

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 30 April 2014
    8 Comments

    While Dickens, staunch champion of the poor and of children, reportedly hoped that A Christmas Carol might encourage the restoration of social harmony, his narrative line can also be seen as a convenient plot device. It is a deeply Christian story, not just about Christmas, but about life itself, about actions and their consequences, the need for wrongs to be made right, and the desire for hope and potentiality of renewal.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Four poems for Seamus Heaney

    • Various
    • 10 December 2013
    3 Comments

    I was brought up to become a Scottish Protestant boy in exile from the country that was my father's homeland. You grew up to be at home in your history and tongue; my father banned your accent, set me to elocution, as if your speech was my speech-defect. Our history lay elsewhere, even as we were living it.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Near the far-sighted eyeball of God

    • Carolyn Masel
    • 29 October 2013
    2 Comments

    A French philosopher went up the Tower to spurn the matchless view. In principle. New York City sparkled at his feet. How to convince them of their value down there: the spontaneity of life on the street — its chaos, brio, democratic lack of vista ... While up here, perilously near the far-sighted eyeball of God (that insatiable, designing orb), you could forget it all, and just hang like a planet, while the lights went out ...

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The seams of the earth start to bulge

    • Jena Woodhouse
    • 04 June 2013
    7 Comments

    Sometimes the dark bird of discord is loosed, to circle massif and savannah, inciting acts of mayhem, orgies of slaughter. But sometimes the white bird of hope is released and the tears it weeps restore something like order.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Child soldier learns murder and motherhood

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 March 2013

    Komona is just 12 when she is brutally conscripted by rebel soldiers. Before long she falls pregnant under horrific circumstances. The best that can be said about her situation is that it offers fragile hope that life may be made to flourish even in a landscape of violence and death.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Ugly face of a self-help monster

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 14 February 2013
    3 Comments

    Health and beauty executive Amy suffers a breakdown at her company's corporate offices. Flash forward, and she has just returned from a stint at a new-age treatment clinic. Enlightened parodies the self-centred philosophies of the cult of self-help and reveals how they can turn a person like Amy into a monster.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Supermarket witches and the Australian pumpkin boom

    • Brian Matthews
    • 09 November 2012
    13 Comments

    Last week saw many people all over Australia observe a ritual that is entirely imposed, bears the magic and irresistible imprimatur of the US, and grows out of nothing in our own history, traditions or folk lore. What significance can Halloween have for Australians about to embark on their hot summer?

    READ MORE