Education:

PhD, History, Boston College
MA, History, Boston College
BA, Foreign Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

 
Research Interests:

I study American immigration history. My major areas of research include nineteenth-century United States, American immigration law and policy, anti-immigrant sentiment, poverty and welfare in America, and global migration.

My dissertation examines the origins of American immigration restriction by exploring policies for deporting alien paupers in nineteenth-century Massachusetts. It demonstrates that Massachusetts’ policies, which were driven by a poisonous combination of cultural prejudice against Irish immigrants and economic concerns about their poverty, set precedents for immigration control and helped lay the foundations for later federal restriction laws. By examining the overseas deportation of native-born and naturalized citizens, my project also analyzes the meaning of citizenship in nineteenth-century America. In addition, by tracing the post-deportation lives of expelled paupers in Britain and Ireland, my dissertation places American nativism in a transnational context and reveals that American deportation policies were part of a wider system of pauper restriction and forcible removal in the Atlantic world.

PUBLICATIONS:

• “The Moment of Transition: State Officials, the Federal Government, and the Formation of American Immigration Policy,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013): forthcoming; winner of the 2012 Organization of American Historians Louis Pelzer Memorial Award.
• “Wendell Phillips.” In The Encyclopedia of the Early Republic and Antebellum America, ed. Christopher Bates. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2010.
• “Angel Island” and “Know Nothing Movement.” In Multicultural America, ed. Carlos E. Cortés and J. Geoffrey Golson. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, forthcoming.
• “Daughters of St. Crispin,” “Lynn (Massachusetts) Shoemakers’ Strike,” and “Pauline Agassiz Shaw.” In Women in American History: An Encyclopedia, ed. Hasia R. Diner. New York: Facts On File, forthcoming. 

Fellowships and Grants

• William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Fellowship, American Society for Legal History, 2012
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Department of History, Boston College, 2012-2013.
• Donald and Hélène White Dissertation Prize in the Humanities, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Boston College, 2012.
• Louis Pelzer Memorial Award, Organization of American Historians, 2012.
  University Dissertation Fellowship, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Boston College, 2011-2012.
• Historians’ Collaborative Program Grant, Organization of American Historians and Japanese Association for American Studies, 2012, 2010, 2009.
• American Studies Association and Japanese Association for American Studies Joint Grant, 2011, 2009.
• Graduate Research Stipend, Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, Boston College, 2011, 2010, 2009.
• Hibernian Research Award, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame, 2010.
• Adele Dalsimer Dissertation Fellowship, Irish Studies Program, Boston College, 2009-2010.
• George E. Pozzetta Dissertation Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society, 2009.
• Gilder Lehrman Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2009.
• John Higham Travel Grant, Organization of American Historians and Immigration and Ethnic History Society, 2009.
• Littleton-Griswold Grant, American Historical Association, 2008.
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2008.
  Research Expense Grant, Graduate Student Association, Boston College, 2008, 2007.
• University Fellowship, Boston College, 2005-2010. 

Conference Presentations:

• “‘Pretended love of personal liberty’: Antislavery, Nativism, and Deportation Policy in Antebellum Massachusetts,” Boston Seminar in Immigration and Urban History, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, January 29, 2013.
• “American Nativism, British Colonialism, and Irish Nationalism: The Atlantic Legal Culture of Pauper Regulation, 1850-1870,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 15-18, 2012.
• “Forced Transnationalism: The Removal of Migrant Paupers from the United States to Canada in the Nineteenth Century,” Borderlands and Transnationalism: New Perspectives on Immigration in Canada and the Untied States, York University, Toronto, Canada, October 19-20, 2012.
• “Immigration Policy in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts,” 24th Colloquium, Japanese Association for American History, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, July 21, 2012.
• “‘A Nation of Immigrants’ Reconsidered: Money, Culture, and the Origins of American Immigration Policy,” Sophia American Studies Colloquium, Institute of American and Canadian Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, June 21, 2012.
• “The Crime of Poverty: A New Perspective in the Study of American Nativism and Immigration Policy,” Japanese Association for American Studies Proseminar, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, June 7, 2012.
• “Gatekeeping Manhattan: Exclusion, Detention, and Assisted Return of Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century New York City,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Baltimore, Maryland, October 20-23, 2011.
• “‘Questionable Immigration’: The British Assisted Emigration Scheme and American Border Control in the Gilded Age,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians with the National Council on Public History, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 19-22, 2012. “Asylums Rediscovered: Immigration Control at Almshouses in Antebellum Massachusetts, ” Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 14-17, 2011.
• “The Moment of Transition: Immigration Control by Northern States and the Struggle for National Immigration Legislation in Reconstruction Years,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Boston, Massachusetts, January 7, 2011.
• “The North American Irish: The Relocation of Irish Migrants from the United States to Canada in the Nineteenth Century,” The Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association Joint Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, November 6, 2010.
• “Across the Atlantic Once Again: Forced Migration of the Poor from the United States to Ireland and Britain,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, San Diego, California, January 10, 2010.
• “Pauper Extradition and Slave Rendition: The Double Standard of Civil Liberties in Antebellum Massachusetts,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., November 6, 2009.
• “An Intersection of Irish and Chinese Immigrant Experiences: American Immigration Policy, 1848-1892,” Fourth World Congress of the International American Studies Association, Beijing, China, September 19, 2009.
• “Forced Labor and Irish Involuntary Migration in the Shadow of American Slave Emancipation,” International Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies, Centre for Irish Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland, June 2009.
• “Resisting Cosmopolitanism: Another Look at Nineteenth-Century Boston as a Port City,” Nordic Association for American Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009.
• “Aliens, Deportation, and Citizenship before the Age of Federal Immigration Restriction,” Harvard Migration and Immigration Incorporation Workshop, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 7, 2009.
• “Countering Nativism: Irish Immigrants’ Fight with the Threat of Deportation in Massachusetts, 1840-1860,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Seattle, Washington, March, 2009.
• "Send Them Back to Liverpool: The Irish ‘Round-Trip’ Migration in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World,” The Northeast Conference on British Studies, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, November 15, 2008.
• "'Middling’ People: The Social Profile of the Boston Irish and the Meaning of College Education in the Early Twentieth Century,” The New England Historical Association, Endicott College, Beverly, Massachusetts, October 25, 2008.
• "Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1848-1877," Brown Bag Lunch Presentation, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, October 15, 2008.
• “‘Purge the State’: Poverty, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Irish Americans in Antebellum Massachusetts,” Graduate Students in American Studies Programs, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, July 19, 2008.
• “Anti-Foreign Pauperism and Irish ‘Exclusion’ in Massachusetts in the Age of the Civil War,” Annual Meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies, St. Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa, April 17, 2008.
• “‘The echoes of Faneuil Hall were silent’: Boundaries of Irish Paupers’ Civil Liberty in Know-Nothing Boston,” Graduate Student Conference “Liberty and Freedom during the Civil War Era,” The George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, February 9, 2008.
• “The Search for ‘White’ Order: Irish Workers’ Assertion of Whiteness in Mid-19th Century New York City,” American Conference for Irish Studies (New England Region), October 2006.
• “‘An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure’: The Removal of Foreign Paupers and anti-Irish Nativism in Massachusetts, 1848-1863,” The New England Historical Association, Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, New Hampshire, May 5, 2007.