March 2025

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
910 1112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031     

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

August 15th, 2008

sqbr: Asterix-like magnifying glass over Perth, Western Australia (australia 2)
Friday, August 15th, 2008 12:49 pm
Having finished my Phd and had some time for my brain to bounce back, I've been filling my brain with lots of different things, including history. The thing is, I find most history books to be either too dry and technical for my not-so-arty brain, or very conventional and uninteresting: all about the lives of kings and other rich white men, and tending to uncritically regurgitate the traditional and nostalgic ideas people already have with just a few glosses of extra facts. I think the desire to try to fit morally grey people like bushrangers and colonists into neat little good guy/bad guy boxes is one of the reasons I find my own country's history so unbearably dull.

One solution to this is to seek out histories which are explicitly from a more non-conventional viewpoint. Tony Robinson is about the only tv historian I can think of who does this, mainly with the lower classes, ie with his Worst jobs in history.

Beneath the cut: a synopsis of what I've found so far, including "The Homosexual History of Australia", "Damned Whores and Gods Police: the history of women in australia" and "Understanding Deaf Culture".
Read more... )
sqbr: "Creative genius" with an arrow pointing to a sketch of me (genius!)
Friday, August 15th, 2008 05:28 pm
And now, the sequel to my last Hapless update. Ah, the joys of marriage...

This was fun to draw, and unlike the last one I had reference shots.