Dennis Laumann

Professor

Phone: 901.678.2515

Email dlaumann@memphis.edu

Office: 139 Mitchell Hall

Office Hours: Email for Hours

Education

Ph.D., History, University of California-Los Angeles, 1999

Fields of interest

Dr. Laumann is a historian of Africa and the African Diaspora. His main areas of expertise include West Africa, the history of Ghana, European colonialism in Africa, historic and cultural links between Cuba and Africa, oral history, and Marxism.

He is a former President of the Ghana Studies Association and currently serves on its Advisory Board. He also is co-editor of the scholarly journal Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana. Dr. Laumann was a United States Fulbright Scholar in Ghana and a Research Affiliate of the University of Ghana.

Dr. Laumann's forthcoming monograph on the history of Cuba and Africa will be published by Ohio University Press. His next research project will focus on the Grenada Revolution of 1979-1983.

Courses taught

Dr. Laumann teaches the following courses: History of Africa to 1500; History of Africa since 1500; History of West African Kingdoms and Empires; Africa and the African Diaspora; and History of South Africa. He also offers occasional graduate seminars on African history. In the past, he has taught undergraduate honors courses on various topics related to Africa, the African Diaspora, and Marxism, and he has directed study abroad programs in Brazil, Cuba, and Ghana.

He has received numerous teaching honors, including: the Most Energetic Teacher Award from the Student Government Association of The University of Memphis; 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.

Representative publications

Books

• Colonial Africa, 1884-1994, Second Edition (Oxford University Press, 2019)
• Remembering the Germans in Ghana (Peter Lang Publishers, 2018)
• Colonial Africa, 1884-1994, Arabic translation by Belabbes Ali Abdelhafid (Dar El Adib Editions, 2016)
• Colonial Africa, 1884-1994 (Oxford University Press, 2013)

Journal articles and book chapters

• "Yuri Smertin's Kwame Nkrumah and the Global Significance of International Publishers," in Books to Change the World: International Publishers at One Hundred, edited by Tony Pecinovsky and Shannon O'Neill (New York: International Publishers, 2024), 29-40
• “AHR Conversation: Black Internationalism,” with Monique Bedasse, Kim D. Butler, Carlos Fernandes, Tejasvi Nagaraja, Benjamin Talton, and Kira Thurman, American Historical Review, 125:5 (December 2020), 1699-1739
• “Ghana Studies: Reflections on the Association,” Ghana Studies, 21 (2018), 130- 132
• "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
• "Domination and Resistance: Epidemic and Exile in the German Togoland Colony," Afrika Zamani, No. 17 (2009), 1-16
• "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

Full list available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dennis-Laumann