Remembering Russell R. Menard (1941–2023)
Russell R. Menard, professor emeritus of early American history at the University of Minnesota and a pioneering member of the Chesapeake School, passed away on November 16, 2023
Photo courtesy Menard family
The Department of History is sad to announce that our distinguished Professor Emeritus Rus Menard passed away in November of 2023. He received his PhD in history from the University of Iowa in 1975 and joined the Department of History at the University of Minnesota in 1976. He specialized in the economic, demographic, and social history of early America, particularly the development of enslaved labor on plantations in the Atlantic World, including the Chesapeake region and West Indies. He contributed to the University in multiple ways, including serving as department chair in History and associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts. In addition to being a pioneering member of the Chesapeake School, Rus co-founded the Historical Census Project in 1989, which eventually grew into the world’s largest population database. He was an outstanding mentor to at least twenty PhD students who continued to meet with him to discuss research projects through last year.
Read a remembrance from the American Historical Association, published in March 2024.
For those of you who would like to make a contribution in memory of Rus Menard, his widow Kathleen has indicated that he would have liked to support the Department of History's Endowed Graduate Research Fund.
