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About the Author
Stan Katz teaches public and international affairs and directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Legal History. He comments frequently on policy issues relating to higher education, particularly liberal education, and on the humanities and social sciences, philanthropy, scholarly relations with Cuba, and the interplay of civil society, constitutionalism, and democracy. And on his beloved Cubs.
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Greg Dening, R.I.P.
I am as committed to e-mail as anyone I know. But I have come to freeze at the sight of a few headers — the ones that either contain no more than the name of a friend, or those, like the one I received yesterday, that say “Sad News.” I take a deep breath before opening such messages, for I know that it conveys an emotional body blow.
My wife, Adria, and I received such a message yesterday, forwarded by a Princeton neighbor currently doing research in Cape Town (a very 21st century communication, indeed). It reported the recent death of our Australian friend Greg Dening. This was a body blow for both of us. We knew that Greg’s health had not been good for some years, but he has continued to write wonderful books and we have been able to keep up an e-mail friendship with him, and with his equally talented wife, the historian Donna Merwick.
Greg was intellectually important to both of us. Adria is the Keeper of Oceania at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, and Greg was one of the preeminent historians and anthropologists of the South Pacific. Just this morning I looked at the inscribed copies of Greg’s books that line her study shelf. And for me, Greg was one of the great humanists of the last century, an historian in mind and spirit.
Greg Dening began life as a Jesuit, but left the order for an academic career. He was among the first of the new breed of Australian scholars, those who went to the United States (Harvard) rather than Oxbridge for their doctoral training. His degree was in anthropology, but he had the instincts of an historian, and at his death he was Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Melbourne. His dissertation and first book, Islands and Beaches: Discourse on a Silent Land, was a harbinger of his remarkable historical approach to the interaction of European and indigenous culture in the 18th-century South Pacific, his region if not his land — a series of stories “from both sides of the beach.”
For me the most interesting development in historiography during the 1970s and 1980s was the anthropological turn. I was fortunate enough to be at Princeton during the years when Clifford Geertz, Natalie Davis, and Bob Darnton were creating anthropological history. Greg was, along with Rhys Isaac, doing very much the same sort of thing for/to history in Australia at the same time. I first met him (and saw Donna, whom I had known for much longer) on my first trip to Oz in 1982. I have never stopped admiring his deeply interactive sense of history. You might want to listen to the recent ABC interview with Greg after the publication of his last book, Church Alive, the history of a Roman Catholic parish on the north shore of Sydney Harbor. Greg describes his work with the parishioners as “experiencing the Word as they hear it,” and his task as historian “to give back to the past its present in all its dimensions.” And so he does, and so he did. Thank you so much, Greg, for what you have given to all of us.
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Posted at 09:44:31 AM on March 16, 2008 | All postings by Stan KatzComments
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A sad message. I learnt yesterday from Chris Leeming of Monash another Jesuit who moved from the traditional ministry ‘into the real world’.
In the 1960 and 70s as an ABC Broadcaster Greg was always one of the first to contact for a sensible and provocative comment on the news. Always available and worth listening to.
He will be missed, but live on in his books and the students and people he touched
Vale Greg
Mike Parer
Michael S Parer Professor, Norton University Co-Chair of Governing Council
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Department of Scientific Research
International Consultant and Research Adviser
Michael S Parer Australian Director
Professor, Norton University Co-Chair of Governing Council
Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, Department of Scientific Research
International Consultant and Research Adviser
DCD-A Head Office in Australia
Camelot in the Jeeralang’s
115 Rickard Drive
Churchill Victoria 3842 Australia
Tel/Fax +61 3 51 221 345
Mobile in Australia 0409 250 004
Mobile in Cambodia 012 700 849
mparer@datafast.net.au
Skype mparer33
www.dcd-kh.org
Australain Director
Developing Cambodia by Degrees
DCD Head Office in Cambodia
The Media Lab – Links Khmer to the Future #12A, Street 88, Group 147, Village 12,
Sangkat Srah Chork, Khan Daun Penh,
Phnom Penh Cambodia
855 (0) 12 700 849
855 (0) 12 900 222
suonsokoeun@yahoo.com
Skype sokoeun76
DCD-A Head Office in Australia
Camelot in the Jeeralang’s
115 Rickard Drive
Churchill Victoria 3842 Australia
Tel/Fax +61 3 51 221 345
Mobile in Australia 0409 250 004
Mobile in Cambodia 012 700 849
mparer@datafast.net.au
Skype mparer33
www.dcd-kh.org
DCD Head Office in Cambodia
The Media Lab – Links Khmer to the Future #12A, Street 88, Group 147, Village 12,
Sangkat Srah Chork, Khan Daun Penh,
Phnom Penh Cambodia
855 (0) 12 700 849
855 (0) 12 900 222
suonsokoeun@yahoo.com
Skype sokoeun76
— Michael and Mally Parer · Mar 17, 02:16 PM · #
Greg Dening’s books changed everything for me. I was (a relatively) young scholar and artist putting together a large and what turned out to be a controversial exhibition in Cape Town in the 1990s. The exhibition attracted much attention and helped to inform and challenge debates about the shifting identities of the post-election South Africa. Dening’s remarkable Islands and Beaches and Mr. Bligh’s Bad Language were inspiring, assisting in a new understanding of the colonial archive, and an understanding of how to give the past back its present. Indeed his ideas were bannered in the exhibition and his work then incorporated into the projects of many young artists and academics.
It is the measure of a great scholar, that Greg Dening’s insights have meaning for all of us everywhere, who care about the past.
— Pippa Skotnes · Mar 18, 08:39 AM · #
This is such sad news. I was extremely fortunate to work with Greg for a month in 1998 at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, and his brilliant insights and boundless generosity changed my thinking forever. I know that sounds like a platitude, but it’s not. I have never met another scholar so in tune with the knowledge that history is both a fiction we invent and a reality we must rescue. As a Ph.D. candidate at the time, I was in awe of his experience and brilliance. Now, ten years on, I’ve had many more encounters with the past, but still never met anyone like Greg (and I loved his casual nature, too, like insisting we all call him “Greg”, despite his authority!) I am sure I never will. RIP, Professor Dening. You were an original, and I am grateful for it.
— Nancy L. Stockdale · Mar 18, 10:16 AM · #
I will greatly miss my favorite Uncle! Yes, I knew Greg an an Uncle, the husband of my mother’s sister. While growing up, we always relished the visits from our fascinating Australian Uncle – who always came with stories of amazing and strange animals (wombats, etc.) and scholarly adventures of researching in musty archives.
My Uncle Greg was kind, patient, and seemed never to be in a hurry. Yet among all this humility, he carried himself with an uncanny sense of grace and dapperness. Polite to an extreme, gentle and a gentleman.
Now fully grown, I also admire Greg for his academic accomplishments that so many are quick to acknowledge.
Exactly one year ago my family visited Greg and Donna in Oz for the first time. We spent 3 memorable weeks there. And my 3 kids got to know Greg as I did when I was a child. Greg and Donna touched them deeply in this time frame. My kid’s grief was painful to witness when they got the news.
I will greatly miss my Uncle. RIP.
Mike Brannan
— Mike Brannan · Mar 20, 11:04 AM · #
I never once met Greg Dening. The most I have by way of contact with him are the few emails that passed between us three years ago, when I asked if he might come to Melbourne to run one of his famed post graduate workshops, in which he might inspire students to reach into the heart of their thesis topics for new ideas. I never met him, but I sense I knew him from his books, his wonderful books and his approach to history and ethnography and life in general. I feel the ache of loss, of opportunities passed, my own that is, for I did imagine that one day soon, I might meet him.
But I have met him in his books and now that will remain with me and for the rest of us, and especially for his family, friends and colleagues, Greg Dening will live on in memory and in his books. Thank you, Greg Dening, for your life’s contribution, for your inspiration and for the love that surely coursed your veins to write with such empathy about the lives of others so different and yet strangely similar to yourself and to all of us.
Elisabeth Hanscombe
— Elisabeth Hanscombe · Mar 21, 05:13 PM · #
35 years ago I was an undergraduate student at Melbourne University and had the privilege of being a student of both Greg and Donna in the history department. Having just last year returned to Uni to do a Master of Arts, I was delighted to find articles by Greg on the web and also his email address. I immediately sent him an email as the subject I was doing was one of his specialties, ethnohistory. He sent me a very gracious and interested reply and encouraged me in my study. Then when I was in Melbourne on a visit, he agreed to meet me and discuss my study. What an honour that was! He left an indelible imprint of his great compassion and interest in the human story. He encouraged me to take risks with my writing and to seek out what truly interested me and write on that, to show “what excited me.” He asked challenging questions encouraging me to really tap into the lives of those in the past “without a voice.” I came away inspired to develop the zest for learning that he had in such huge measure. I have read most of his books and am always touched by the honesty and strength of his words. What a wonderful man and what an ongoing inspiration. I am honoured that although I live many kilometres from Melbourne, my daughter was able to attend his funeral to represent me. Greg will live on in the many people whose lives and work he has touched in such remarkable ways.
Helen Stagg
— Helen Stagg · Apr 9, 05:08 AM · #