Patrick Wolfe
Australian historian (1949–2016)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patrick Wolfe (1949 – 18 February 2016)[1] was an English historian and scholar who lived and wrote in Australia.
London School of Economics (MSc)
Patrick Wolfe | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1949 Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 18 February 2016 (aged 66–67) Melbourne, Australia |
| Occupation | Historian |
| Academic background | |
| Education | University of Melbourne (BA, PhD) London School of Economics (MSc) |
| Doctoral advisor | Dipesh Chakrabarty |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | Victoria University, Melbourne, La Trobe University |
| Main interests | Aboriginal history |
| Influenced | Settler colonial studies |
Born into an Irish Catholic and German Jewish family in Yorkshire, England, his works are credited with establishing the field of settler colonial studies.[2] He also made significant contributions to several academic fields, including anthropology, genocide studies, Indigenous studies, and the historiography of race, colonialism, and imperialism.[3]
Biography
Wolfe was born to an Irish Catholic and German Jewish family in Yorkshire where he received a Jesuit education.[1] In the 1970s he collaborated with Sibnarayan Ray and Greg Dening as an undergraduate.[1] Along with Maurice Bloch, he began his post-graduate studies in social anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science.[1] He then went on to pursue his doctorate with Greg Dening under the supervision of Dipesh Chakrabarty.[1] As a doctoral student he taught Aboriginal history at the University of Melbourne.[1] He was associated with a number of universities in Australia as a teacher and researcher, including Victoria University and La Trobe University. Wolfe held fellowships at Harvard and Stanford among other places.[4] He never held an academic tenure or a permanent university position.[5] His research spanned race and colonialism around the world.[6]
Wolfe's home was Healesville on Wurundjeri country. At his memorial service, Wurundjeri Elder Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin described Wolfe as a cherished friend of the Wurundjeri.[5]
Works
Monographs
- Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology (1999)
- Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race (2016)
Edited collections
- The Settler Complex: Recuperating Binarism in Colonial Studies (editor Patrick Wolfe, 2016)
- Sovereignty: Frontiers of Possibility, co-edited by Julie Evans, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly, and Patrick Wolfe (2012)
Academic articles
- "Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race" in The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 866–905.
- "Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native" in Journal of Genocide Research, no. 8 (2006): 387–409.
