The Almanac of an Australian Cunning Man
This talk explores the fragmentary records of Cunning men and Women in colonial Australia with a focus on the surviving records of charms, curses, and magical cures in the 1840s almanac of Tasmanian publican William Allison recording the practices of Tasmanian Cunning man, Benjamin Noakes.
Bio
Dr David Waldron is a Senior Lecturer in History at Federation University Australia with a research focus on folklore and community heritage. He is the author of “Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival” (Carolina Academic Press 2008), “Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay – a Case Study in Local Folklore” (Hidden Press 2010) and “Snarls from the Tea-Tree: Victoria’s Big Cat Folklore” (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2013), editor/contributor of “Goldfields and the Gothic: a Hidden Heritage and Folklore” (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2016) and author of “Aradale: the Making of a Haunted Asylum (Australian Scholarly Publishing 2020). He is regularly involved in public engagements, festivals, and multi-media displays, including the Ballarat Heritage Festival, and is the co-writer and researcher for the 2019 National Trust of Australia People’s Choice award and 2023 Victorian Community History Award-winning podcast series “Tales from Rat City”
Curated & Hosted by
Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
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