Title: George Harold Dunne, S.J. Papers

Identifier/Call Number: 5600 DunG

Contributing Institution: California Jesuit Archives

Language of Material: English

Physical Description: 5.0 Linear feet

Date (inclusive): 1931-1998

George H. Dunne, S.J., (1905-1998) was a Jesuit priest, early critic of racial segregation, writer, and teacher. He served in the California China Mission, 1932-1936, studying Chinese language and theology near Shanghai. He completed his doctoral studies in International Relations at University of Chicago in 1944 and later expanded his dissertation into Generation of Giants: the story of Jesuits in China in the last decades of the Ming dynasty. (1962). In Los Angeles in 1946 he supported the stage employees union in Hollywood. In 1946 his play Trial by Fire portrayed the bombing of a African American family in a Los Angeles white neighborhood. He was then assigned as a parish priest in Phoenix and later as a professor at Santa Clara University. In 1962 he was appointed Assistant for International Programs for the President of Georgetown University where he established a training center for Peace Corps volunteers. From 1968 to 1972 he served as General Secretary of the ecumenical Committee on Society, Development, and Peace (SODEPAX) in Geneva. He remained in Switzerland as director for Georgetown University's study program at University of Fribourg until 1985. The last years of his life were spent at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles where he published his memoirs King's Pawn (1990).

The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, published and unpublished articles, and plays written by George Dunne, as well as homilies, lectures, and addresses. Other materials include: photographs, clippings, typescripts, sound recordings, and a reel of color film taken in Ethiopia with Peace Corps volunteers. A scrapbook documents Dunne's Trial by Fire and the play's performances, 1946-1947.

Dunne, George H. (George Harold), 1905-1998

Jesuits--Biography

Jesuits--Missions--China

Peace Corps (U.S.)

Committee on Society, Development, and Peace