Here is the obituary:
Richard S. Dunn, 93, formerly of Philadelphia, an award-winning professor emeritus of American history at the University of Pennsylvania, director emeritus of the groundbreaking McNeil Center for Early American Studies, co-executive officer emeritus of the American Philosophical Society, and a prolific researcher and author, died Monday, Jan. 24, of congestive heart failure and COVID-19 at home in Winston-Salem, N.C.
A renowned expert on early American and Caribbean history, he was a professor at Penn for 40 years. He chaired the school’s history department from 1972 to 1977, helped recruit its first tenured women faculty members, and won the school’s 1993 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching.
He served on several committees that shaped the School of Arts and Sciences and the university as a whole, and was named Penn’s first Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols professor of American History. The history department created the Richard S. Dunn Award for Distinguished Teaching after his retirement in 1996.
Professor Dunn formed the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies, now the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, at Penn in 1977, and served in leadership roles until 2000. The center’s Richard S. Dunn fellowship recognizes excellence in scholarship, and its head of staff holds the Richard S. Dunn directorship.
In an online tribute, current director Emma Hart said: “Richard’s legacy will endure far beyond his lifetime.”
In 2002, Professor Dunn and his wife, Mary Maples Dunn, became co-executive officers of the Philadelphia-based American Philosophical Society. For six years they oversaw, among other things, the society’s initiatives on research, fellowships, exchange scholars, endowments, and building renovations.
A well-traveled researcher, Professor Dunn edited, wrote, and reviewed numerous papers, books, and articles. His 1972 book, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1713, was a 1973 National Book Award finalist in history, and his 2014 book, A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia, won the 2015 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for nonfiction.
He also won other awards and fellowships, and was a member of many scholarly organizations. He earned the 2017 American Historical Association’s Award for Scholarly Distinction, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and spoke about his work at many events around the world.
Read the rest here. For our previous coverage of Richard Dunn’s death click here and here.