John Gills at the Fluid Frontiers Workshop, held in October 2011 at the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine
Today John Gillis and his wife, Christina Gillis, should (pandemic shipping permitting!) receive a booklet of appreciation for John and his lifetime of work as a historian. A number of scholars have come together over the past months to find ways to celebrate John and his legacy and to convey to him and to his family the deep appreciation so many of us feel for his writings, his mentorship and collegiality, and his role in inspiring new fields of endeavor. We didn’t consider the traditional festschrift, a volume of essays by colleagues and former students honoring a scholar, perhaps because of the pandemic but probably moreso because one volume would hardly suffice. John’s legacy more properly includes bibliographies than mere volumes. This post brings together and creates a record of the series of celebrations of John’s career and his scholarship, particularly his books Islands of the Mind and The Human Shore. These books, according to Christopher Pastore, “have energized a new generation of historians, geographers, and literary and legal scholars to consider the ways material environments and the human imagination are inextricably connected.”
First, some background about John is in order. He received a B.A. from Amherst College and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Since retirement from Rutgers University, John and Christina have lived in Berkeley, California, but they have long spent their summers on Great Gott Island, off Acadia Park in Maine. Those who have known him longest recall him as a cultural historian of the family, first studying Germany, then Britain, then expanding to Europe and America. The present appreciation gives short shrift, unfortunately, to that wonderful work. Instead it focuses on John’s legacy in shaping the emerging fields of coastal history and ocean history. Here is John’s website for those who would like to explore his work: http://johnrgillis.com/. For those who would like to know more about Maine island living, read Christina Mardsen Gillis’s wonderful Writing on Stone: Scenes from a Maine Island Life (University Press of New England, 2008)
In the present moment of remote and digital work, the appreciation of John Gillis took the form of a Letter of Appreciation posted to Google for signatures and short comments as well as a Tribute Roundtable held on December 3, 2020. Isaac Land and I organized the letter, which John and Christina read before the Roundtable but which remained open for signatures for a short while afterward. Christopher Pastore organized the roundtable, but many others who participated in the roundtable also contributed to the overall effort. Here is Steven Mentz’s blog post about the Roundtable: https://stevementz.com/?s=john+gillis
The tributes by signatories, who hail from a dozen countries around the world, reveal a few themes. First, we’ve learned from John to study what we love, in his case and in so many of ours: islands, coasts, and oceans. Second, we’ve collectively been the beneficiaries of John’s incredibly deep and wide generosity as he extended mentorship and friendship. Third, we return to John’s books and essays again and again for our own inspiration and to share them with students. You can read the Letter of Appreciation and added tributes in the electronic copy of the hard-cover booklet John received:
Roundtable panelists included:
- Godfrey Baldacchino, University of Malta
- Margaret Cohen, Stanford University
- Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire
- Isaac Land, Indiana State University
- Dr. Elizabeth Mancke, University of New Brunswick
- Steve Mentz, St. John’s University
- Chris Pastore, University at Albany, State University of New York
- Helen Rozwadowski, University of Connecticut, Avery Point
- Franziska Torma, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society
- Kären Wigen, Stanford University
You can watch a recording of the Tribute Roundtable event at:
Finally, if you’d like to explore the wealth of scholarship that has emerged from coastal history and ocean history, some of it can be found in two shared Zotero bibliographies created by two organizations that welcome new members. One is complied by the International Commission of the History of Oceanography; it includes works on the history of marine science as well as some work on ocean history more generally:
The other, compiled by the Coastal History Network, includes works on coastal history and coastal studies across many disciplines: