Dennis Laumann

Associate Professor

Office: 139 Mitchell
Telephone: 901.678.3392
Fax: 901.678.2720
E-mail: dlaumann@memphis.edu
Webpage: https://umdrive.memphis.edu/
dlaumann/public/home.html
Education: Ph.D., History, University of California-Los Angeles, 1999

Fields of interest

West African history, especially the history of Ghana; colonialism; oral history; and Marxist theory and history.

Dr. Laumann is a United States Fulbright Scholar and Research Affiliate of the University of Ghana.

He is President of the Ghana Studies Association, an international scholarly organization which publishes the multidisciplinary journal Ghana Studies: http://people.tamu.edu/~yarak/gsc.html

Courses taught

Dr. Laumann teaches the following courses: History of Africa to 1500; History of Africa since 1500; History of West Africa and the African Atlantic Diaspora; History of South Africa; African Women’s History; and graduate seminars on topics in African history. In addition, Dr. Laumann directs the Memphis Study Abroad Program to Ghana: http://www.memphis.edu/aaas/ghana/index.htm.

He has received numerous teaching honors, including the Thomas W. Briggs Foundation’s Excellence in Teaching Award; the Award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Arts and Sciences; the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University Honors Program; and the Advisor of the Year Award from The University of Memphis.

Dr. Laumann is affiliated with the university’s African and African American Studies Program: http://cassian.memphis.edu/isc/aaas/ and the Helen Hardin Honors Program: http://www.memphis.edu/honors/index.php.

Representative publications

• Remembering the Germans in Ghana (Peter Lang, in press)
• “Narratives of a ‘Model Colony’: German Togoland in Written and Oral Histories,” German Colonialism and National Identity, edited by Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer (Routledge, 2011), 278-291
• “Identity, Memory, and Oral History: German Colonialism and Ewe Ethnicity in Ghana,” Africa and the West, 8 (April 2010), 129-161
• “Che Guevara’s Visit to Ghana,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, New Series No. 9 (2005), 61-74
• “The History of the Ewe of Togo and Benin from Pre-Colonial Times,” in The Ewe of Togo and Benin, edited by Benjamin Lawrence (Woeli Publishing, 2005), 14-28
• “Togo: Colonial Period: German Rule” and “Aja-Speaking Peoples: Aja, Fon, and Ewe, 17th & 18th Centuries,” Encyclopedia of African History, edited by Kevin Shillington (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2005)
• “A Historiography of German Togoland, or the Rise and Fall of a ‘Model Colony,’” History in Africa 30 (2003), 195-211
• “Boniface I. Obichere, Pan-Africanism, and African History,” Ufahamu 29, no. 1 (Winter 2001), 11-18
• “Compradores-in-arms: the Fante Confederation Project, 1868-1871,” Ufahamu 21:1-2 (Winter/Spring 1993), 120-36

Dr. Laumann’s current projects include a monograph on colonialism in Africa for Oxford University Press; a textbook on the history of Ghana, co-authored with Dr. Kofi Baku of the University of Ghana; and a study of links between the Communist Party USA and African liberation movements.