Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream

Do historians “write their biographies” with the subjects they choose to address in their research? In this collection, editors Alan M. Kraut and David A. Gerber compiled eleven original essays by historians whose own ethnic backgrounds shaped the choices they have made about their own research and writing as scholars. These authors, historians of American immigration and ethnicity, revisited family and personal experiences and reflect on how their lives helped shape their later scholarly pursuits, at times inspiring specific questions they asked of the nation’s immigrant past. They address issues of diversity, multiculturalism, and assimilation in academia, in the discipline of history, and in society at large. Most have been pioneers not only in their respective fields, but also in representing their ethnic group within American academia. Some of the women in the group were in the vanguard of gender diversity in the discipline of history as well as on the faculties of the institutions where they have taught.

The authors in this collection represent a wide array of backgrounds, spanning Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. What they have in common is their passionate engagement with the making of social and personal identities and with finding a voice to explain their personal stories in public terms.

Contributors: Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp, John Bodnar, María C. García, David A. Gerber, Violet M. Showers Johnson, Alan M. Kraut, Timothy J. Meagher, Deborah Dash Moore, Dominic A. Pacyga, Barbara M. Posadas, Eileen H. Tamura, Virginia Yans, Judy Yung

ALAN M. KRAUT is University Professor of History at American University, a nonresident Fellow of the Migration Policy Institute, and president of the Organization of American Historians. He is the author of The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880–1921; Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the “Immigrant Menace”; Goldberger’s War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader; and coauthor of Covenant of Care: Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in America (Rutgers University Press).

DAVID A. GERBER is Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Buffalo where he continues to teach and assist in directing the Center for Disability Studies.  He is the author of American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction and Authors of Their Lives: The Personal Correspondence of British Immigrants to North America in the Nineteenth Century.