The Minnesota School and Immigration History at Midwestern Land Grant Universities, 1890–2005

Abstract

This article offers an alternative genealogy for American immigration history. It traces the origins of the methods and analytical interests of the new social historians of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s to the early work of immigration historians at midwestern land grant universities. At the University of Minnesota, historian Theodore Blegen introduced a long-term legacy of ‘history from the bottom up,’ privileging the building of archives and the building of collaborations among first and second generation academics, ethnic communities and scholarly research.