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Telephone: (617) 552-1196 Office Location: Connolly House Email: kennyka@bc.edu Curriculum Vitae: please click here |
Education
Ph.D.,Columbia University, 1994
Fields of Interest
U.S. immigration and labor; migration and diaspora; the American Irish; Ireland and the British Empire
Academic Profile
Professor Kenny's principal area of research and teaching is the history of American immigration and labor, with an emphasis on Irish transatlantic migration and popular protest in the Atlantic world since 1700. His first book, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998), examines how traditions of agrarian protest in nineteenth-century Ireland were translated into an American industrial setting. His second book, The American Irish: A History (2000), examines the Irish migration to North America from 1700 to the present, including the Irish preconditions to mass emigration and questions of labor, social mobility, religion, race, gender, politics, and nationalism among the Irish in the United States. He is also editor of Ireland and the British Empire: The Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series (2004). He is currently writing a book, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment, about Indian-European relations from William Penn to the American Revolution, with particular attention to the French and Indian War.
For a list of Ph.D. dissertations that Prof. Kenny has supervised, please click here.
Representative Publications
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Gli irelandesi che hanno fatto l’America (Torino: Umberto Allemandi, 2006). Hardcover, 103 pages, with 90 illustrations. Italian translation of the simultaneously published English original, The Irish: Towards the USA (2006)
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Ireland and the British Empire, Editor (2004).
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"Diaspora and Comparison: The Global Irish as a Case Study," Journal of American History (June 2003)
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New Directions in Irish-American History (2003)
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The American Irish: A History (2000)
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"Development of the Working Classes" Blackwell Companion to Nineteenth-Century America (1999)
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Making Sense of the Molly Maguires (1998)
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"Ethnicity and Immigration" The New American History (1997, co-author with James P. Shenton)
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"The Molly Maguires and the Catholic Church" Labor History (1995)
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"The Molly Maguires in Popular Culture" Journal of American Ethnic History (1995)
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"Nativism, Labor, and Slavery: The Political Odyssey of Benjamin Bannan, 1850-1860" The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography (1994)