Inga Clendinnen

Inga Clendinnen , née Jewell (born August 17, 1934 in Geelong , † September 8, 2016 in Melbourne ), was an Australian historian, anthropologist, intellectual and author.

Clendinnen was the daughter of a cabinet maker who later served on the city council of her hometown. The years of depression and the experiences of the Second World War were formative for her childhood. She studied at the University of Melbourne with a bachelor's degree in 1955 and was then a senior tutor at the University of Melbourne (1956 to 1965 and again in 1968). In 1969 she became a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University , which had been founded two years earlier, and remained there until 1989. In 1975 she obtained a master’s degree.

She dealt with social history and in particular the clash of foreign cultures, for example the encounter of white immigrants in Australia and the indigenous people (with a controversial reinterpretation, first presented in the Boyer Lectures in 1999) and the encounter of Maya and other indigenous people with the Spanish conquerors in Central America. She was considered an expert on the culture of the Aztecs , who particularly emphasized the central role of human sacrifice in Aztec culture. One of their interests was violence in society. She also published on the Holocaust and her book Reading the Holocaust has received multiple awards. It looked at the extermination camps from a new anthropological perspective, including the forced participation of the inmates themselves in the organization of the camps (special commandos) and the hierarchical relationships between inmates and guards.

She was married to the Australian science philosopher F. John Clendinnen (1924-2013) since 1955 , with whom she had two children. In 2000 she published autobiographical essays on illness and death (Tiger's Eye). She also wrote reviews and essays, for example for Quarterly Essay , with one essay on historiography becoming particularly well known (Who owns the past?).

In 2016 she received a Dan David Prize in the field of Past - Society History . In 2006 she became an Officer of the Order of Australia and in 1992 a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities . In 1987 she was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study . In 2005 she received the Biennial Medal from the Australian Society of Authors.

Fonts

• Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521333970 (received the Herbert Eugene Bolton Memorial Prize and the Spanish-American Quincentennial Prize in 1988)
• Disciplining the Indians: Franciscan Ideology and Missionary Violence in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan, Past and Present, No. 94, 1982, pp. 27-48
• The cost of courage in Aztec society, Past and Present, No. 107, May 1985, pp. 44-89
• Aztecs: In terms of interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991. ISBN 9780521400930 .
• "Fierce and unnatural cruelty": Cortés and the conquest of Mexico, in: Representations, No. 33, Special Issue: The New World 1991, pp. 65–100, (received the American Society for Ethno-History Prize)
• Reading the Holocaust. Melbourne: Text Publishing 1998. ISBN 1875847766 (received the General History Prize of New South Wales in 1999 and the Gleebooks Prize for Critical Writing of New South Wales in 2000 and the New York Times Best Book of the Year Award and the National Jewish Book Award in 1999 in the USA)
• True Stories: History, Politics, Aboriginality, Sydney: ABC Books 1999, 2nd edition, Melbourne: Text Publishing 2008. ISBN 9781921351341 .
• Tiger's Eye - A Memoir. Melbourne: Text Publishing 2000. ISBN 9781876485559 (received the Adelaide Festival Award in 2002)
• Dancing with Strangers: Europeans and Australians at First Contact. Melbourne: Text Publishing 2003. ISBN 1877008583 (received the Douglas Stewart Prize of New South Wales in 2004 and the Kiriyama Prize in 2004 )
• Agamemnon's Kiss: Selected Essays. Melbourne: Text Publishing 2006. ISBN 9781920885670 .
• The History Question: Who Owns the Past? Quarterly Essay, No. 23. Melbourne: Black Inc 2006. ISBN 9781863952545 .
• The Cost of Courage in Aztec Society: Essays on Mesoamerican Society and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press 2010. ISBN 9780521518116 .

Web links

• Australian Biography
• Inga Clendinnen , Encyclopedia of Women and Leadership in twentieth century Australia