Joe Dunn
Dr. Joe P. Dunn is the Charles A. Dana Professor of History and Politics who has been at Converse for almost 50 years. He received a B.S. degree in history from Southeast Missouri State University, an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from the University of Missouri, and he completed post-doctorate work in political science at Duke University.
He has been a college professor for more than 50 years. He taught previously as a graduate student at the University of Missouri and at the University of Maryland—European Division, where he taught on military bases in Greece, Turkey, Spain, and Germany. In 2005 he was visiting professor of history at the University of Iceland.
Dr. Dunn serves as executive director of the Carolinas Committee on U.S.-Arab Relations; co-editor of its newsletter, Newslines; director of the Southeast Model Arab League; advisory board for the National Model Arab League; and governing board member and director of International Model NATO. He has been a Joseph J. Malone Faculty Fellow in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain (1990), Israel/Palestine and Egypt (1992), Lebanon and Syria (2001) and Morocco (2011); faculty delegation leader for the Kuwait Studies Program (2000) and the Arab League Exchange Program in Cairo (2003); participant in the Council on International Educational Exchange International Faculty Development Seminars in Croatia and Bosnia (2002) and Jordan (2004); Gilman-Lehrer Scholar at Harvard University (2005); participant in the Teaching about Terrorism Seminar (2006) and the ISODARCO Pugwash conference in Italy (2007). Most recently he was a Qatar Foundation Fellow in Qatar (2014) and Alwaleed bin Talal Fellow in Oman (2015).
Active in missions work, he has led or participated in construction projects in the Dominican Republic, Peru, Egypt, Costa Rica, Ghana, Cuba, Iraq and in Katrina Relief in Mississippi. He raised money to build an orphanage and churches that are named in his honor in Ghana, where he is honorary Paramount Chief of Kwahu-Tafo District. He has traveled extensively in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Most recently, he has done consulting work on progressive, student-active education in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Dr. Dunn’s teaching interests include the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, American foreign policy and recent political history, Islamic and Middle East politics, international terrorism, political violence and genocide, women in the global environment, and student college campus protest.
His teaching and scholarship awards include:
- Faculty Marshall 2019-2021
- Cato Award for Faculty Excellence, 2016
- Alwaleed bin Talal Fellow, 2016, Oman
- Qatar Foundation Fellow, 2014, Doha, Qatar
- CASE/Carnegie Foundation 2013 South Carolina Professor of the Year
- Joe Ann Lever Award for Faculty Excellence, 2012
- Model Arab League Lifetime Achievement Award, National Council on US-Arab Relations, 2006
- Department Curricular Innovation Award, 2004
- Scholarship and Creative Achievement Award, 2003
- Outstanding Organizational Adviser, 2003
- South Carolina Governor’s Distinguished Professor (multiple times)
- Outstanding Teaching in Political Science, American Political Science Assn. and Pi Sigma Alpha National Political Science Honor Society (four times)
- Above and Beyond Award for Extraordinary Service to Students, 2001
- Kathryne Amelia Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching, 1988.
Selected Publications & Presentations
Dr. Dunn has published: Teaching the Vietnam War: Resources and Assessments (1990), The Future South: A Historical Perspective for the Twenty-First Century (1991), Desk Warrior: Memoirs of a Combat REMF (1999), Southern Women at the Millennium: A Historical Perspective on the Twentieth Century (2003), A Good and Ordinary Life: A Memoir of the Rural Midwest (2012), a memoir/history of his mother and the communities in rural Southeast Missouri that shaped her life, and “I Have Done the Work”: The Times and Life of James Hutchison Kerr (2014).
He has published more than 100 articles and book chapters, scores of encyclopedia articles, and more than 550 professional book reviews; given more than 80 conference papers; and made more than 550 community presentations in 40 different journals. In 2012 he did a commissioned article on the Vietnam War published in Greek. An eclectic scholar who constantly finds new areas to explore, his most recent publications have been on Presbyterian missionaries in Iraq and Cuba, the evolution of women’s athletics in the South, a series of essays on Indochina for a Smithsonian Institution reference work, and many essays on teaching.
He has lectured at the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College, and the U.S. Air Force War College; participated in numerous national security forums; and he was a member of the board of scholars of the Vietnam Veterans Institute. He has been interviewed in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, US News and World Report, and many other periodicals and newspapers in this country and around the world. In 2003 he gave the Friend-Bollinger Regional History Lecture, an endowed distinguished professor honor at his alma mater, and in 2014, the James Clarke Chace Memorial Lecture at the Bard Government and International Affairs program in New York City.
Newslines: The Newsletter of the Carolinas Committee on U.S.-Arab Relations
Dr. Joe P. Dunn, Director
- Volume 37, No 1 (May 2023)
- Volume 36, No 1 (June 2022)
- Volume 35, No 1 (June 2021)
- Volume 34, No 1 (June 2020)
- Volume 33, No 1 (June 2019)
- Volume 32, No 1 (June 2018)
- Volume 31, No 1 (June 2017)
Carologue: A Publication of the South Carolina Historical Society
The Ride of the Valkyries: The Evolution of Athletics and Sport at Converse College