Free and mobile brachiopods from New Zealand Oligocene deposits and Australian waters

The musculature of the Recent Australian species, Magadina cumingi (Davidson 1852), is revised and previously unknown dorsal median pedicle muscles are described. The behaviour of M. cumingi is analysed in relation to the physical properties of the bryozoan sands it occupies on the Australian shelf. Functional morphology of a New Zealand Oligocene species, Rhizothyris amygdala Thomson 1920, indicates that this species would also have lived as a free and mobile form in the originally unconsolidated sediments (greensands) in which it is preserved. Shell characters of members of both Magadina and Rhizothyris are incompatible with an attached sedentary existence.     

Hygiene,health, and bodily knowledge, 1880-1940: a New Zealand case study

One of the key aims of the Dunedin Southern Suburbs project has been to examine the factors that structured opportunity in a period of rapid modernization in New Zealand, 1880-1940. This article argues that health was a key determinant of opportunity and examines how people thought about their bodies and sought to maintain health. It argues that older, humoral theories about health were maintained alongside new understandings wrought by the germ theory and that both placed a high value on regimen. Mothers were regarded as the household experts on health but lacked a vocabulary to communicate with their daughters about menstruation. While bodily health was an ideal to be striven for, there was little communication about bodily pleasure, a situation subject to change with the adoption of family limitation.     

New Xenaland: Lesbian place making,the Xenaverse,and Aotearoa New Zealand

This article explores the relationship between unmappable lesbian space, the Xenaverse, which is a complex discursive space generated out of the syndicated television show Xena: Warrior Princess, and the national space of Aotearoa New Zealand. The article argues that the Xenaverse is an imaginary space which is also a lesbian space and that it is partially pulled into material national space by its links to Aotearoa New Zealand. It is therefore an excellent example of the complex and recursive process of lesbian place making. The role of distance as a significant factor for dominant national discourses, the Xenaverse, and lesbian possibility is discussed to partially account for the materialisation of the Xenaverse in Aotearoa New Zealand. The article suggests that unmappable lesbian spaces such as the Xenaverse can be examined using three analytic filters: ephemeral space; queered lesbian space; and neo-colonial processes.     

Indigenous Exceptionalism under Fire: Assessing Indigenous Soldiers in Combat with the Australian,Canadian, New Zealand and American Armies during the Second World War

The literature on Indigenous participation in the Second World War from Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand has tended to portray Indigenous soldiers as exceptionally able and courageous in battle. While heart-warmingly laudatory and an understandable product of genuine evidentiary challenges in researching this subject, the image constructed is partial and unrealistic. At best it is misleading; at worst it conflates indigeneity and combat proficiency in ways that reinforce racial stereotypes of Indigenous people as ‘natural’ warriors prevalent during the war. This article argues that we discard the exceptionalism enshrouding Indigenous combat performance in favour of a more culturally nuanced approach.