Donna Jeanne Merwick (February 14, 1932

Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

– August 22, 2021

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

) was a historian who was Senior Fellow in the Department of History at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...

, Long Term Visiting Fellow at

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

, and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Swinburne Institute for Social Research at the

Swinburne University of Technology The Swinburne University of Technology (or simply Swinburne) is a public university, public research university in Melbourne, Australia. It is the modern descendant of the Eastern Suburbs Technical College established in 1908, renamed Swinburne ...

Early life

After studying history at

Mundelein College Mundelein College was a private, independent, Roman Catholic Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Located on the edge of the Rogers Park, Chicago, Rogers Park and Edgewater, Chicago, Edgewater neig ...

, Merwick entered the Order of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In 1962 she earned a MA from

DePaul University DePaul University is a private university, private Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from ...

and a Ph.D. from the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

. She began teaching at Mundelein in 1966, left the Order in 1968 and began teaching at the University of Melbourne in 1971 (she retired in 1995).

Personal life

Merwick married Australian historian

Greg Dening Gregory Moore Dening (29 March 1931 – 13 March 2008) was an Australian historian of the Pacific. Dening was born in Newcastle, New South Wales. He was educated at two Jesuit schools: St. Louis School in Perth and Xavier College in Melbourne. ...

in 1971.

Publications

*''Boston priests, 1848-1910: a study of social and intellectual change'' 1973 *''Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: the Dutch and English experiences'' 1990 *''Death of a notary: conquest and change in colonial New York'' 1999 *''The shame and the sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian encounters in New Netherland'' 2006 *''Stuyvesant Bound: An Essay on Loss Across Time'' 2013

Journal articles

*Geertz, Clifford, 'History and Anthropology', New Literary History, vol. 21, 1990, pp. 325–335. *Hoffer, Peter, 'Review of Death of a notary', The Journal of American History, vol. 87, no. 4, 2001, pp. 1465–6. *Kroen, Sheryl, 'Review of Death of a notary', Rethinking History, vol. 4, no. 2, 2000, pp. 228–230.

References

DePaul University alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Mundelein College alumni American women historians Australian women historians Academic staff of Swinburne University of Technology Academic staff of the University of Melbourne 1932 births 2021 deaths Historians from Chicago American women non-fiction writers 20th-century American Roman Catholic nuns {{US-historian-stub