The Dunning School refers to a group of historians who shared a historiographical

Historiography

Historiography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...

 school of thought regarding the Reconstruction period of American history (1865–1877).
It was named after Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 professor William Archibald Dunning

William Archibald Dunning

William Archibald Dunning was an American historian who founded the Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography at Columbia University, where he had graduated in 1881. Between 1886 and 1903 he taught history at Columbia, and was named a professor in 1904. Born in Plainfield, N...

 (1857–1922), whose works and teachings in the early 20th century on Reconstruction were influential. He supported the idea that the South

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

 had been ruined by Reconstruction.