Richard S. Dunn

Richard S. Dunn (1928–2018) was an American historian and one of the foremost scholars of early American and British Atlantic history. He was the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor Emeritus of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught for many decades and directed the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies. Dunn's major scholarly works include Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (1972) and Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (1962). His book A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia (2014) is a decades-long study comparing slave life on two specific plantations—one in Jamaica, one in Virginia—across three generations. The book won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction in 2015 and the Bancroft Prize, and is considered a landmark contribution to the history of Atlantic slavery. Dunn received numerous fellowships and was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.