I am a social and cultural historian of migration, studying the intersections of ethnicity, race, gender, class, and religion in the United States and Canada. . From January through May 2008 I will serve as Fulbright Chair at York University (Canada) where I will begin a new project: "Gendered Americanism: Constructing National Identities Abroad during the Twentieth Century."
I teach the undergraduate surveys of recent United States history and of American women's history and upper-division courses on topics in U.S. history, including a seminar on U.S.-Canada relations. Graduate seminars examine ethnicity, race, and gender in North America during the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Jointly appointed with the Gender and Women's Studies Program, I offer a course on "Women and Work."
I co-authored two prize-winning books in 2005. Permeable Border: The Great Lakes Basin as Transnational Region, 1650-1990 received the 2006 Albert B. Corey Prize, awarded jointly and biennially by the American Historical Association and Canadian Historical Association for the best book on Canada-U.S. relations or the history of both countries. Jewish Life in the Industrial Promised Land,1855-2005 received a 2006 State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan and was a Finalist for a 2006 Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY).
My forthcoming work includes a book chapter and two essays on three different topics: "'Talented and Charming Strangers from Across the Line': Gendered Nationalism, Class Privilege, and the American Woman's Club of Calgary"; “The Beaver, the Eagle, and Not-So-Foreign Relations: Population Movements between Canada and the United States”; and "Conversion as a 'Two-Edged Sword': Evangelicalism among Pittsburgh's German Immigrants."
I am guest-editor for two special issues on “Borderlands” for the Michigan Historical Review to appear in Spring and Fall 2008. I also am writing The Splintered Cross: Religion and Ideology among German Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century Pittsburgh, for which I received a grant from the WMU Faculty Research and Creative Activities Support Fund. Other projects include working with Janet L. Coryell on a textbook entitled Women and America: An Integrated History and co-editing, with Dirk Hoerder, Migrants and Migration in Modern North America: Cross-Border Life Courses, Labor Markets, and Politics in Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the United States.
Recently I have given invited presentations at Duke University, the University of Calgary, and the University of Toronto. In 2007-08 I will give presentations at the Fulbright Academic Orientation Meeting (Ottawa), Social Science History Association (Chicago), European Social Science History Conference (Lisbon), and Organization of American Historians (New York).
