Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from June, 2013

A Saturday morning tour of Ernst's heritage

Headstone Tribute of Maria Heyne, Agnes Straubel and Theodor Ernst  One of the best (awesomest as my students would say) aspect of researching a writer from your own city/state is that  the places in which they lived, worked, visited are easily accessible. Visiting from Adelaide, Trevor, a descendant of Olga's uncle Christian Martin Ernst, invited me to join him to visit significant 'sites' in Ernst's life. I hoped to gain a 'sense' of the German Melbourne community in which she lived. Of course, my thesis is NOT a biography although I have completed enough research to write one! A writer's environment impacts on their work and so this 'physical' research gives me an opportunity to 'place' Ernst's writing in context.  483 & 485 Brunswick St A productive morning beginning with the search for the headstone in the Lutheran section of the Melbourne General Cemetery, visiting the East Melbourne Trinity Lutheran Church where Ernst

Post PhD - Who's the audience?

What happens when I finish? The end maybe in sight - well at least in the next year or so.  What then? Who is the audience, apart from supervisors and examiners?  Maybe...the Librarian ... with enough wine and chocolates to convince him that proof reading for spliced commas and other grammatical disasters is important.  How will I feel?  Elated, Ready for a long holiday!  Ready to rejoin the human race – the family and friends? Able to  do things I've been putting off?  Do I select elements of the thesis  to develop and rewrite for publication? Do I  select elements for conference presentation? Is there a book of Ernst's life waiting to be written? Ah well... the end will not be reached unless I begin my next chapter on Pedagogy and Place in Ernst's work.