Joe Harris Lunn, Ph.D.

Emeriti Professor of History
Joe Harris Lunn
College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters
Social Sciences

Teaching Areas:

History

Research Areas:

Africa, France, The First World War

Biography and Education

Joe Lunn is Emeriti Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in African and modern European history (joint degree) and is a specialist in cross-cultural comparative and oral history. A Fulbright Senior Research Scholar and recipient of the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Distinguished Research Award, he is the author of Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War, which received the Alf Heggoy Prize (for best book) of the French Colonial Historical Society. He is also a co-founder of the African/African American Studies (AAAS) program and a former Chair of the Faculty Senate.

Selected Publications

Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. Heinemann, 1999.
L’odyssée des combattants sénégalais, 1914-1918. L'Harmattan, 2014.
“The Great War and Senegalese Memory: The Veterans’ Legacy,” First World War Studies, 10, 1, (2019)
“Senegalesische Kriegsgefangene erzählen,” Frankfurt, 2014
“France’s Legacy to Demba Mboup? A Wolof Griot (and His Descendants) Remember His Military Service During the Great War,” Cambridge, 2011.
"`Les Races guerrières': Racial Preconceptions in the French Military about West Africans during the First World War," The Journal of Contemporary History 34, 4 (1999).
"Kande Kamara Speaks: An Oral History of the West African Experience in France, 1914-1918," Macmillan, 1987.

Education

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison

Awards and Recognition

  • Distinguished Research Award, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2006.
  • Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, United States Department of State, 2001.
  • Alfred Heggoy Prize of the French Colonial Historical Society/Société d’histoire coloniale française for the best book (Memoirs of the Maelstrom) published in French colonial history, 2000.
  • Herskovitz Award (finalist) of the African Studies Association for the best book (Memoirs of the Maelstrom) published in African studies, 2000.
  • Faculty Senate Appreciation Awards (for leadership as Vice Chair and Chair), University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2010-12.