The WHA and broader western history community was saddened to learn news of the death of John R. Wunder. The WHA thanks Professor Wunder's family for approving the following obituary, written by Andrew Graybill (Co-Director of the SMU Clements Center for Southwest Studies) for WHA members and beyond. Once it is available, the WHA will also post a link here to John's official obituary in the Lincoln Journal Star.

John Remley Wunder (1945-2023)

John R. Wunder died on Sunday, June 25, 2023, in Lincoln, NE at the age of 78.  He leaves behind a remarkable legacy of scholarly work and devoted mentorship.  He is already missed.

John was born on January 7, 1945, in the small town of Vinton, Iowa, and grew up in nearby Dysart, as an only child.  His mother Mary was a schoolteacher, and his father, Arnold, worked as a mechanic at a local gas station and later owned a business that supplied gas and petroleum products to farmers, small businesses, and individual consumers.  John remained fiercely proud of his rural, Midwestern upbringing, which informed his personal outlook and shaped his intellectual interests. 

He arrived at the University of Iowa in fall 1963 to study mathematics (likely a surprise to many people reading this), switched briefly to accounting (perhaps even more surprising), and then—inspired by a two-semester Western civ survey as well as courses on the U.S. West with Malcolm Rohrbough—gravitated to history, earning his BA in 1967, which he followed with an MA and a JD, both received in 1970.  He then set out for the University of Washington with his wife Susan (née Anderson), whom he married in 1969, “during the summer of love,” he liked to say.  In Seattle he studied for his doctorate under Vernon Carstensen, a fellow Iowan and noted scholar of the American West.  He was awarded the PhD in 1974.

John was a committed regionalist, which is to say that he was fascinated by every region, and it is thus fitting that he taught all over the United States (and beyond).  His first appointment was at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland (1974-78), followed by stints at Texas Tech (1978-84) and Clemson (1984-88), before he settled permanently at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), which marked a homecoming of sorts, given the focus of his scholarship as well as the proximity to his home state.  He held visiting positions at several institutions, including Lewis and Clark College, Columbia University, the Australian National University, and the University of New Mexico; in 1994-95 he was the Fulbright Bicentennial Chair in American Studies at the Renvall Institute at the University of Helsinki, an adventure that sparked in him an abiding interest in all things Finnish.

John was recruited to UNL in 1988 to direct the Center for Great Plains Studies, then a dozen years old; he soon made his own mark on the place, characterized by a collaborative approach and boundless enthusiasm for new projects and ideas.  He served in that role for nine years.  John held numerous other leadership positions throughout his career: department head at Clemson (where he swore he could hear kudzu actually growing); associate dean in the UNL College of Arts and Sciences; president of the UNL Faculty Senate; president of the Mari Sandoz Historical Society (a particular love of his); and of course president of the Western History Association in 2010-11, which was, for him, among the brightest of his many professional highlights.

In an era of increased specialization, John’s scholarly range was astonishing—he was a generalist in the best sense of the word, publishing on legal history, the history of Indigenous America, the Chinese experience in the American West, Nebraska and the Great Plains, sports, politics, even historians and historiography.  His publication record was vast: author or co-author of four monographs, including “Retained by the People”: A History of American Indians and the Bill of Rights (Oxford, 1994), more than fifty journal articles and book chapters, and dozens of reviews.  He remained active after his retirement from UNL in 2011, but furrowed new rows, as with a collection of prose poems about the Great Plains that he published earlier this year.  And he had a splendid editorial touch, which he brought to the numerous volumes he helped to publish in a pair of book series he helmed at the University of Nebraska Press and Texas Tech University Press.

But above all, and without a doubt, John would want to be most remembered as a teacher and mentor, work that he loved and at which he excelled, suggested by the roughly 30 PhD dissertations and 70 MA theses he advised over the course of his career, on subjects in—and sometimes well outside of—his wheelhouse.  In the short time since word of his passing has circulated, former students have shared tributes via email and social media.  It is worth quoting from a few of them:

“The word in my mind is generosity—I remember the day I asked John to be my advisor for my MA thesis.  As a new and bewildered graduate student at that meeting (and many others), he offered the advice and guidance and ideas I needed—ideas and interests that still sit with me to this day and are guiding the next phase of the work I hope to do. He was such a force for good in the world.”

“His impact on Western History, Native American History, and the history of the Great Plains is beyond description.  His incredible legacy will live on in the vast diaspora of Wunder students who continue teaching, researching, writing, and shaping our knowledge of the American West.  Indeed, a big chunk of you out there are fellow Wunder-kinds.”

“I'm processing John's passing very slowly.  My life would be completely different if two of his former students hadn't directed me on the path toward John at UNL.  I don't even like to think about the alternatives of the ‘what if I hadn't met John?’ question." 

Let me add just a few words of my own.  I owe my career to John.  Having rolled snake eyes (again) in my job search during the 2002-03 job cycle, John invited me to apply for a late-breaking visiting assistant professorship at UNL, which I was fortunate to land.  During that year, he showed me the ropes—a whole bundle of them, in fact—so that when the position was later advertised as a tenure stream appointment, I was a plausible applicant.  All the while he and Susan showed me and my family incredible kindness.  I loved Lincoln and UNL, and still do, and I’m grateful for my career.  John made all that possible, and I’ve never forgotten it.

John is survived by his wife of nearly 54 years, Dr. Susan Wunder, their daughters Nell and Amanda (herself a history professor), as well as Amanda’s husband Shamus and their son Anders.  A memorial service and a celebration of John’s life and work, open to all, will be held in Lincoln early in the fall—details forthcoming later this suimmer.  For those wishing to honor John, his family suggests contributions to the Chief Standing Bear Scholarship Fund: https://www.nebcommfound.org/give/standingbear/

Thanks to Jon Lauck, Elaine Nelson, and Brenden Rensink for extremely helpful biographies of John which I consulted in writing this piece.