HSS: 'Passing Over': The Story behind over Four Decades of Teaching and Historical Research about Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean World

The paper explores aspects of the relationship between James Warren's life and work over more than four decades. James Warren begins by discussing John Dunne's notion of 'Passing Over' as a way to comprehend the meaning of a life lived as historian. The paper then raises the question of what has driven the choice of problems/topics that James Warren has worked on over the past four decades. To answer the question the author touches, albeit briefly, on his family origins and childhood, his Peace Corps experience, graduate school, teaching at Murdoch University, and abiding themes in his work, as well as the future, having entered the anthropocene at the start of the twenty first century.