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Greg Dening

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Gregory Moore Dening[1](29 March 1931 – 13 March 2008)[2]was an Australian historian of thePacific.

Dening was born inNewcastle,New South Wales.He was educated at twoJesuitschools:St. Louis SchoolinPerthandXavier CollegeinMelbourne.He received an MA from theUniversity of Melbourneand a PhD fromHarvard University,where his doctoral dissertation was a historical ethnography of theMarquesas Islands.From the late 1960s he became the centre of anethnographichistory school called the 'Melbourne Group'. He taughtsociologyandhistoryatLa Trobe University,Melbourne and one semester ofanthropologyat theUniversity of Hawaiʻibefore being appointed Max Crawford Professor of History at the University of Melbourne in 1971.

AsEmeritusProfessor of History at theUniversity of Melbourne,he was one of Australia's most eminent historians, and one of the preeminent historians and anthropologists of the South Pacific. From 1998 to 2004 he taught ten-day graduate workshops at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at theAustralian National University,Canberra.He died on 13 March 2008 inHobart.Vanessa Smith of theUniversity of Sydneyspoke of "...his unique gift as a historian, unobtrusively demonstrating that the most acute critical perception is not incommensurate with the deepest appreciation of his subjects' human circumstances."[3]

Personal life

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He entered theSociety of Jesusin 1948. In 1970 he left thepriesthoodbecause he could not preach against the use of birth control, the banning of which was outlined byPope Paul VIin his encyclicalHumanae Vitaein 1968. Together with his wife,American-bornDonna Merwick(another significant historian who dealt mainly with the early colonial histories ofNew York) Dening served as a mentor for many and often described history-making as a process of "performance".They thus centred their collaborative seminars around this notion of performing and" Doing History ", as Dening called it, since it involved" present "-ing the past. His personal life was deeply entwined with his professional life, as he inspired generations of Pacific and Australian historians and taught a special brand of humility toward his subject material. He devoted much of his time to nurturing students and exploring his own fascinations withOceaniaand encounters between indigenous people and outsiders on the in-between spaces of the "beach", a metaphor he developed rigorously.

Quotes

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  • "...the abiding grace of history...[is that] it is the theatre in which we experience truth". (Performances,1996)
  • "In the theater of my history, I want the reader to go where I haven't been. It is not for me to say whether I have succeeded in doing that. I know I try to give my readers freedom by being mysterious". ( "Enigma Variations on History in Three Keys: A Conversational Essay" )
  • "I cannot cope with an anthropology of natives and a history of strangers. I have ambitions to do an anthrohistory of them both. I have a passionate belief as well that I am a story-teller. Story is my theatre. Story is my art". ( "Writing, Rewriting the Beach",Rethinking History,2(2), p. 170)

Bibliography

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  • Dening, Greg (1973). "History as a social system".Historical Studies.15:673–685.doi:10.1080/10314617308595498.
  • — (1978).Xavier: a centenary portrait.Kew, Vic.: Old Xavierians' Association.
  • — (1980).Islands and beaches: discourse on a silent land, Marquesas, 1774–1880.Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press.
  • The Death ofWilliam Gooch:A History's AnthropologyISBN978-0-522-84692-8.1991
  • Mr Bligh'sBad Language: Passion, Power and Theater onThe Bounty.ISBN978-0-521-38370-7.1992
  • Xavier PortraitsISBN978-0-9595926-1-0.1993
  • PerformancesISBN978-0-226-14298-2.1996
  • — (1997). "Beside the seaside".Eureka Street.7(8): 39.
  • Readings/WritingsISBN978-0-522-84841-0.1998
  • 'Writing, Rewriting the Beach',Rethinking History2: 2, 1998, p. 170.
  • "Enigma Variations on History in Three Keys: A Conversational Essay",History and Theory,39, Issue 2, May 2000, 210 – 217. © Wesleyan University.
  • Beach Crossings: Voyaging Across Times, Cultures and SelfISBN978-0-522-84886-1.2004
  • Church Alive!: Pilgrimages in Faith,1956–2006ISBN978-0-86840-843-9.2006
  • Wallumetta: The Other Side: Faith, Life and Worship on the North Shore1856–2006ISBN978-0-86840-907-8.2006
  • William Pascoe Crook,An Account of the Marquesas Islands 1797–1799,ed. Greg Deninget al.ISBN2-904171-66-2,2007
  • — (2007–2008). "James Joyce and the soul of Irish Jesuitry".Australasian Journal of Irish Studies.7:10–19.
  • Challenges to Perform: History, Passion and the Imagination
  • 'Wayfinding: Dancing on the Beaches of the Mind' in Gert Reifhart & Philip Morrissey, eds, Aesopic Voices: Re-framing Truth through Concealed Ways of Presentation in the 20th and 21st Centuries, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2011, pages 338–357.

References

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  1. ^University of Melbourne Archives."Dening, Gregory M."Recollect CMS.Retrieved10 June2024.
  2. ^Chakrabarty, Dipesh (9 April 2008)."An imaginative and original historian".The Age.Retrieved10 June2024.
  3. ^Smith, Vanessa (2009), "Two-Way Traffic",Eighteenth-Century Studies,42(4): 611,doi:10.1353/ecs.0.0077,S2CID162312112

Further reading

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  • Douglas, Bronwen (2008), "Greg Dening: Wayfinder in the Presents of the Past",Journal of Pacific History,43(3): 359–366,doi:10.1080/00223340802499765,S2CID143918444
  • Chakrabarty, Dipesh (9 April 2008), "An Imaginative and Original Historian",The Age
  • Merwick, Donna, ed. (1994),Dangerous Liaisons: Essays in Honour of Greg Dening,History Department, University of Melbourne,ISBN0-7325-0607-7
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