You may have noticed that my blog posts have been sporadic of late. This is because my life has been in turmoil.
I am writing this on the day that I am leaving Australia for Singapore. Hubble has a great new IT job and I am very happy to move to a new place and new cultures while still doing what I do online. An international move is complicated enough but then an unexpected thing happened.
The paper I delivered to the Australian Historical Association conference in Brisbane was received very well. Unexpectedly I have now landed myself the task of writing a book.
This all happened in the last month we were to be in Australia. So in the midst getting rid of a heap of stuff from our house via Gumtree, visiting four states to catch up with family and deliver stuff and more, I have been working out how to manage the research and writing of an Australian history.
My life has been frenetic during the last two months. There have been so many curve balls that have come our way that writing has been difficult. It was such a welcome relief to stay for ten days in a university college in Brisbane for the Australian Historical Association conference immersing myself in history, reading, writing and research. During those precious ten days I had time to think and the writing just flowed. I am looking forward to settling down in Singapore and having the head space to write again.
Too many competing tasks have been elbowing each other for my attention during the last few months. There was a long period of uncertainty before the upheaval and that too had its own challenges. This year I have had to prioritise and be focussed which has meant that I cannot be online as often as I have been in the past.
I owe a great deal to the history, digital humanities and book reviewing bloggers and tweeps that I have followed over the last four years. The research methodology I used in my paper was drawn from what I have learned about digital humanities both online and at THATCamps. I learned about new approaches to the history of World War I from history bloggers and tweeps, particularly on the day I put out a call on Twitter for WWI history books that go beyond the usual tales of heroism and battle strategy. From the book reviewers I am learning what makes a history book enticing for a general audience.
I am going to treat Singapore as my writing retreat and Australia as my archive and public activity zone. You will definitely continue to hear from me and see me in Australia in the future. Melbourne will be our Australian base but I will be back in Sydney both for research and conferences. I am looking forward to the International Digital Humanities conference and the Australian Historical Association conference both of which will be held in Sydney next year.
I enjoy blogging so I will continue to share my thoughts on this blog and review books. I expect I will post about the writing process as well as the odd post or two about my family history.
I look forward to staying in touch with you via my blogs and Twitter.
All the best Yvonne.
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Yes!!! Reviewing World War I diaries is an important way of capturing the personal beliefs held by Australian soldiers serving at the front in war. Especially, as you say, in the dominant masculine culture in Australian thinking. I hope the book goes very well indeed.
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Amen to that! Those of us who have read about the diaries of Kit McNaughton through the book Kitty’s War by Janet Butler would have been appalled by the ABCTV series about the Anzac nurses, trivialising their role with rubbishy romance. We *need* an intelligent, coherent, comprehensive history of Anzac to demolish the mythmaking!
Yvonne, I am so glad your base will be Melbourne, because we will probably see more of each other than we did when you were in Sydney, but … I still feel a bit bereft.
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Congratulations and all the best, Yvonne.
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Sounds like an exciting adventure is about to begin!
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Congratulations Yvonne and so glad I met you before the big move!
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Great news Yvonne! Every good wish and hope you find time to draw breath!
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How blessed we are that even though you’re thousands of kilometers away, you’ll still be here!
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Best wishes for this new stage of your life Yvonne, and I look forward to some posts from Singapore
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So pleased you’ll still be blogging from Singapore. Good luck with the move and good luck with the book, too. Well done.
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Congratulations Yvonee! What wonderful news. Time to write – bliss!
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Great News!!! And congratulations on the reception of your work!!! Is your paper available on line? I’d love to read it and know where you are going with the book. And I am so glad you are experiencing the shear fun, as well as the hard work, that scholarship can offer. All the best!
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Reblogged this on Blogs by Bahais.
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Hi! I am a Baha’i from Connecticut, USA. I’ve come to this blog through June who has re-blogged several of my poems on Blogs by Baha’is. As a history buff, I thought that two of my poems may be of some (mild) interest to you:
1) About the passing of the last WW1 combatant:
http://bookofpain.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/as-should-we-all/
2) The Frtiz Haber story:
http://bookofpain.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/knowledge/
The Frtiz Haber story is particularly poignant and goes beyond even what I wrote. For example, he was the fellow who was instrumental in getting Einstein to move to his Berlin institute and he and his wife acted as the Einstein’s marriage councilors when they were in that city before their breakup. If that’s not irony, nothing is.
PS: good luck on the move!
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Oh that’s so very exciting!!! Congratulations!
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Thanks Deborah. It’s amazing what life throws your way.
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