John Gillis and the Personal as Historical

Abstract

John R. Gillis died on 7 December 2021. In his long career, John was a German historian, a British historian, and then a historian of the relationship between humans and their geographical surroundings. He wrote seven monographs and edited four volumes of essays (listed below). He spent almost all his career at Rutgers University, where he served as Chair of the History Department multiple times between the early 1970s and the late 1980s. He was always as enthusiastic about teaching an introductory survey course to a class of freshmen as about formulating fascinating seminar topics for graduate students, many of whom, like myself, were fortunate to continue a friendship with him long after leaving the official confines of the advisor/advisee relationship. He was prolific and interdisciplinary. He was a leader and a mentor, a generous colleague and a creative scholar. The through line of his professional life was the connection between sociability and intellectual rigour, the intersection of the personal and the scholarly.