Coolabah, Nr 28, 2020, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i 

Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, 

Universitat de Barcelona 
 
 

4 
 

Tribute to Geoff Davis 
 

 

Nicholas Birns 

Nb2003@nyu.edu 

 

 

Copyright© 2020  Nicholas Birns. This text may be archived 

and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, 

provided that the author and journal are properly cited and 

no fee is charged, in accordance with our Creative Commons 

Licence. 

 

 

Abstract: A tribute to Geoff Davis  

Keywords: Geoff Davis, engagement, postcolonial criticism 

 

I first met Geoffrey Davis at the Toronto MLA in 1993. I was at a dinner with Robert 

Ross, my predecessor as editor of Antipodes (and the journal’s founder). We fell into a 

discussion about Sarah Gertrude Millin, how postcolonial criticism was not taking stock 

of her, and her anomalous role as both a Jewish critic of Nazism and a racist whose 

attitude towards Africans was unconscionable. I got from Geoffrey a deep sense of 

engagement with South Africa as well as a sense of urbane, if grainy and engaged, 

cosmopolitanism. This was in the period of what I might term high postcolonial criticism, 

and Geoffrey’s work was truly postcolonial, embracing both settler and imperial 

colonialism, and at home equally with Indian, Australia, and New Zealand writers as well 

of course as South African fiction and drama. But he was not one of those who simply 

saw the common denominator of these places as the residue of British colonialism. A 

scholar not only in Germany but in and of the German language, his scholarship crossed 

linguistic boundaries and thus was able to see that colonialism is not just about a 

specifically British administrative practice, but about larger patterns of domination, 

exploitation, and hegemony. His perspective looked forward to the critical approaches of 

the 21st Century, and indeed he mentored many of the critics active in the study of the 

Global South today. His dedication to ACLALS and his engagement in the institutional 

structure of an emerging field was evident in our conversations, and I know how much 

ACLALS will miss his participation and enthusiasm. Geoffrey Davis was a learned, 

compassionate, and kind man, who loved good writing and hated racism and any kind of 

cruelty. His loss a huge gap in the field that he would want and encourage emerging 

scholars to fill. 

 

mailto:Nb2003@nyu.edu


Coolabah, Nr 28, 2020, ISSN 1988-5946, Observatori: Centre d’Estudis Australians i 

Transnacionals / Observatory: Australian and Transnational Studies Centre, 

Universitat de Barcelona 
 
 

5 
 

 

Bionote: Nicholas Birns teaches at New York University and edited the journey 
Antipodes from 2000 to 2018. He is the author of Contemporary Australian Literature: A 

World Not Yet Dead (Sydney University Press, 2015) and is currently coediting The 

Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel.