Immigration History Research Center Research Articles

“The Sunshine Lady” Lidia Pucińska

Abstract Lidia Pucińska (1896–1984) emigrated from Kraków to the United States in 1912, where she pursued her career first as an actor and then as a playwright, manager, producer, and host of a Polish-language radio program named “Sunshine Hour” (Godzina Słoneczna). Known as the “Sunshine Lady,” she engaged her audience in various social, political, and charitable endeavors promoting Polishness and supporting both Poles and Polish Americans. Among others, they funded a bomber during World War II and welcomed refugees admitted to the United States under provisions of the Displaced Persons Act, adopted thanks to the efforts of the Polish American Congress. From the 1950s, she was deeply involved in promoting the political career of her son, Roman Pucinski. This article, based on the archival materials from the Polish Museum of America in Chicago and the Immigration History Research Center in Minneapolis, presents the life and achievements of this outstanding Polish American radio star and community leader.

The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021

The Italian American Studies Association at Fifty-Five: 1966–2021

Collaboration Across Borders, or Piiride-ülene Koostöö: Estonians and Americans Working Together Towards Accessible Archival Collections

A collaborative project to improve global description and thus discovery of library material is shared and analyzed after a decade of activity. The Immigration History Research Center Archives and the National Archives of Estonia work together to arrange and describe archival collections, utilizing the assets of the two different institutions. This project recognizes that the unique research material located in Minnesota holds importance to patrons in many countries, are a result of cultural and informational migration, and that access to this multilingual source material relies on robust description. The article provides the project’s context, and describes its administration.

The Role of the Public Historian: An Interview with Donna Gabaccia

Research Article| October 01 2017 The Role of the Public Historian: An Interview with Donna Gabaccia Erika Lee; Erika Lee Erika Lee is Distinguished McKnight University Professor, the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History, and Director of the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of three books and dozens of articles and book chapters on Asian American and immigration history, especially the history of immigration policy in the United States. Her 2015 book, The Making of Asian America (Simon & Schuster), won the 2015 Asian Pacific American Award for literature from the American Library Association. At the IHRC, she directs the Immigrant Stories digital storytelling and archiving project (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities) and manages the #ImmigrationSyllabus project. She was the recipient of the 2016 Pioneer Award from OCA—Asian Pacific American Advocates and the 2015 Immigrant Heritage Award from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Donna Gabaccia Donna Gabaccia Donna Gabaccia is Professor of History at the University of Toronto and past Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of fourteen books and dozens of articles on immigrant class, gender, and food studies in the United States; on Italian migration around the world; and on migration in world history. Her 2015 book Gender and International Migration (Russell Sage Foundation), co-authored with sociologist and demographer Katharine M. Donato, was awarded an Honorable Mention from the American Sociological Association’s Znaniecki Prize. Her previous book, Foreign Relations: American Immigration in Global Perspective (Princeton University Press), won the 2012 Theodore Saloutos Prize from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. Her work in public history earned her the 2013 University of Minnesota Outstanding Community Service Award for Faculty and the 2012 Society of American Archivists’ Hamer-Kegan Award for the Immigration History Research Center Project, “Digitizing Immigrant Letters.” In 2008–2009, she was President of the Social Science History Association. She is currently Chair of the Executive Board of the Toronto Ward Museum. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in history and women’s studies, focusing on migration, gender, and diasporas in world history, digital history, and gender in the kitchen. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2017) 37 (1): 70–77. https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.37.1.0070 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Erika Lee, Donna Gabaccia; The Role of the Public Historian: An Interview with Donna Gabaccia. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2017; 37 (1): 70–77. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jamerethnhist.37.1.0070 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

‘If it is not too expensive, then you can send me sugar’: money matters among migrants and their families

Discussions about money among migrants and their families have long been a financial and emotional concern. Earning money, or more money, and securing a family’s present and future well-being were significant factors when men and women made the decision to immigrate abroad over the twentieth century. With postal services globally systemized, literally tons of letters crossed oceans and continents for migrants, their families, and others to remain in touch. Letters, as historians and other scholars note, provide a plethora of information and insight on the lives and experiences of migrants and non-migrants. These micro-narratives set against the backdrop of national and local macro-narratives, contribute to understanding the state of mind and the state of heart of correspondents whose reason for writing was directly linked to migration. In this paper, we examine issues that relate to money and its emotional underpinnings as conveyed by a number of migrants and their more sedentary families over the first half of the twentieth century. The letters we examine in our paper are part of the Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project collection housed at the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center (archives.ihrc.umn.edu/dil/index.html). The letters, originally written in Italian, Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, and Latvian, were translated into English as part of the Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project. Here, we examine migrant family letters using an interdisciplinary, comparative approach drawn from economic theory, social history and migration history. Some of the questions we explore are: What kind of monetary issues mattered and to whom? In what ways did these issues impact migrants and their families? How did money and familial intimacy intervene with processes of migration? What are some of the prominent links between money, family and migration discussed in migrant correspondence?

Immigration History Research Center

Immigration History Research Center

Exploring the Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project as a Teaching Tool

FOR THIS FORUM on teaching, we show how we use letters sent between migrants and non-migrants in the classroom for an undergraduate interdisciplinary course on gender and international migration. Our scope is to identify some of the ways in which students can study digitally accessible letters along with other biographical material (photographs, manuscripts, and videos) for discussing in class the interaction between gender dynamics and migration experiences. A further goal of ours is to enhance students’ appreciation of issues related to the access and preservation of historical documents, and explore the efficacy of using migrant correspondence as a viable online source for studying past migration movements. The Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) at the University of Minnesota is home to one of the largest collections of books, newspapers, archival sources, personal papers, and other documents related to immigrants and refugees who settled in the United States after 1848, with a majority of materials produced between 1880 and 1980. Recently, the IHRC began to digitize immigrant letters as part of the Digitizing Immigrant Letters (DIL) project that was initiated in 2009 by the IHRC director, Donna Gabaccia; Lead Scholar Sonia Cancian; and IHRC Curator Daniel Necas. Many of the documents they and their team of librarians; curators; and postdoctoral, graduate, and undergraduate students selected, transcribed, translated, and digitized consist of letters that were sent to and from immigrants. The letters included in the DIL project come from thirteen different families; much of the correspondence was written in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the digitized collections include original manuscripts, audio readings, and photographs; some include short video documentaries. English translations are provided for all of the letters, in addition to contextualized descriptions for the individual collections and their letter writers. By providing a transcription (in some cases, from Cyrillic to the Roman alphabet) and translation of the original texts, the DIL’s letter collections immediately became accessible to a global audience of English-speaking students, teachers,

Forging a Socialist Homeland from Multiple Worlds: North American Finns in Soviet Karelia 1921-1938

In the early 1930s, the Soviet Union recruited an estimated 6,000 Finns from North America to augment the number of skilled workers in the recently established Karelian Autonomous Republic. Using migrants' letters and memoirs held at the Immigration History Research Center, this essay examines how these North American Finns adapted and responded to fluctuating policies in the Soviet Union that originally flaunted the foreign workers as leaders in the Soviet modernization drive and as the vanguard for exporting revolution, but eventually condemned them as an enemy nation to be expunged. It also analyzes the extent to which these immigrants internalized 'building socialism' as part of their encounter with Soviet Karelia. Such an exploration requires assessing how these settlers’ ideological adaptation affected their experiences. This paper argues that by placing the North American Finns’ experience in the wider context of Soviet state building policies, these migrants’ identity formation involved participation in, avoidance of, and opposition to the terms of daily life that emerged within the purview of building socialism.

Introduction to the Proceedings Issue of The Pluralist 5.3 Fall 2010

Introduction to the Proceedings Issue of The Pluralist 5.3 Fall 2010 Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, President, California State University Outstanding Professor of Philosophy On behalf of the society for the Advancement of American Philosophy and with pride and pleasure, I offer to the readers of the journal a selection of papers presented at the 37th meeting of the society, sponsored by the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and Queens University of Charlotte and held in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 11-13, 2010. This Proceedings Issue represents the first of such issues to be published in The Pluralist, which is now the official journal of our society. The Pluralist and the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy share a similar mission, namely to focus on pluralism and inclusion in philosophical conversation of many different points of view. In carrying out this focus, our meetings not only explore the deep roots of America's philosophical history, bringing to fore the interpretation of human experience, the critiques of American society, and the emphasis on the intimacy between thought and action contained in the work of such figures as Emerson, Thoreau, Peirce, James, Royce, Dewey, Addams, and Dubois, but also seek conversation and interaction with contemporary problems and philosophical themes and with various philosophical movements and groups as well as with international colleagues and societies. Thus, this year, our meeting included sessions presented by the Cologne Constructivist Group, the Associazione Pragma (Italy), the Society for the Study of Process Philosophy, the Society for the Study of Africana Philosophy, the Santayana Society, and the Jane Collective. There was also a panel entitled "What Is American about American Philosophy?" which featured philosopher-colleagues from Japan, Finland, and Brazil. This Proceedings issue includes the Coss Dialogue lecture, which brings in a scholar from another discipline area, in this case, from history. The response papers to the lecture are also represented. Four papers were designated [End Page 1] prize papers, respectively, the Douglas Greenlee prize, the Illa and John Mellow prize, the Joseph L. Blau prize, and the Jane Addams prize. Finally, there is the Presidential Address given by James Campbell, Professor of Philosophy, the University of Toledo and SAAP President 2008-2010. The Coss lecturer this year was Donna R. Gabaccia, Fesler-Lampert Chair in Public Humanities and Director of the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota. Her article "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" explores the question "What does it mean for a nation to call itself 'a nation of immigrants'?" This paper brings to light the fact that the United States alone makes this claim, though other nations surpass the United States in the number of immigrants who have come to their counties. This leads Dr. Gabaccia to an analysis of key phrases such as "immigrant," "emigrant," and "nation of immigrants," to discover what these central and evocative terms reveal about the society and cultures that use them. Gabaccia traces the history of these phrases as used in the United States and several other nations and concludes that "Even if 'nation of immigrants' serves to hide a long history of American restriction and exclusion, . . . it nevertheless also asserts the importance of celebrating inclusion." There were three respondents to Dr. Gabaccia's lecture. Marilyn Fischer, University of Dayton, titled her response "Keywords: What's an Advocate to Do with the Words She's Given?" Fischer gives some examples of how keywords led her to new insights about classic texts, and then discusses how Grace Abbott and Jane Addams talked about and advocated for immigrants. She asserts: "When the words the culture gave them carried messages of denigration, restriction, and exclusion, they found strategies to subvert these messages." Jose Jorge Mendoza, in his response to the Coss paper, focuses on differing ways human population movements figure in nation building. He argues that immigration is an important topic for philosophical analysis and discussion because it is an issue that "lies at the heart of the intersection between political philosophy and philosophy of race—an intersection that shows, more than anywhere else and in particular the debate surrounding the use of the word illegal. Celia Bardwell-Jones, Towson University, in her response, explores the politics...

Connecting Atlantic, Indian Ocean, China Seas, and Pacific Migrations, 1830s to 1930s

Only recently have historians begun to study the world's oceans and their role in connecting formerly isolated societies. For a long time oceans have rather been regarded as empty spaces between continents and barriers to communication. The approach to migration has also undergone several changes in recent decades. Discussions have moved away from the traditional historical emphasis that isolates continents and nation states toward broader concepts of social space. The conference Connecting Atlantic, Indian Ocean, China Seas, and Pacific Migrations, 1830s to 1930s that took place December 6-8, 2007, at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, organized in cooperation with the Immigration History Research Center of the University of Minnesota, Arizona State University, and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, aimed at bringing together the new interest in maritime history and the history of migration in order to examine oceanic worlds as systems or networks of migration. The conference program was based on the assumption that transoceanic communication and exchange was a major force of globalization, with the inten tion of broadening perspectives beyond the Atlantic and looking at migrations in different oceanic world regions and on relationships between these migration systems. The conference brought together scholars from all parts of the world and thus offered a true global-history approach from beyond the Atlantic core of knowledge production. Though the century from the 1830s to the 1930s, when the Great Depression and Second World War in Asia and Europe put a halt to much migration, seems to be an adequate periodization for several seas and migration systems, conference participants agreed that global history must be careful not to impose periodiza tions that make sense in some regions but not in others. As Adam McKeown (Columbia University) pointed out in his keynote lecture, historians instead have to look closely at how each flow was shaped by its own specific history, regu latory environment, economic opportunities, and power relations, even when pro cesses and cycles of migration grew increasingly integrated across the globe. Questions of state regulation and the mechanisms of control that influ enced the movements of people were recurrent themes of the conference. Mary Blewett (University of Massachusetts, Lowell) focused on shifts between the 1860s and 1920s in markets, capital investment, acquisition of raw materials, and sites of production in the transatlantic worsted trade, and the preceding and ensuing labor migrations. Showing how the McKinley

The Immigration History Research Center: Out of the Past, a Promising Future

The Immigration History Research Center: Out of the Past, a Promising Future

The Immigration History Research Center

Serials Review visits the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Center's mission is to teach the importance of immigration studies and promote the use of the IHRC collections, which concentrate on immigration to America from 1880 through the beginning of the twentieth century from eastern, central, and southern Europe and the Near East. The Center also supports Collections Online: A Digital Library of American Immigration & Ethnic History (COLLAGE), a database of images and narratives from the archives. Serials Review 2003; 29:151–153.

The Immigration History Research Center

Serials Review visits the Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Center's mission is to teach the importance of immigration studies and promote the use of the IHRC collections, which concentrate on immigration to America from 1880 through the beginning of the twentieth century from eastern, central, and southern Europe and the Near East. The Center also supports Collections Online: A Digital Library of American Immigration & Ethnic History (COLLAGE), a database of images and narratives from the archives. Serials Review 2003; 29:151–153.

Preserving American Polonia: Perspectives from the Immigration History Research Center

Research Article| April 01 2003 Preserving American Polonia: Perspectives from the Immigration History Research Center Joel Wurl Joel Wurl Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Polish American Studies (2003) 60 (1): 27–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/20148654 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Joel Wurl; Preserving American Polonia: Perspectives from the Immigration History Research Center. Polish American Studies 1 January 2003; 60 (1): 27–35. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/20148654 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressPolish American Studies Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright Polish American Historical Association Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Defining the "Trans-Atlantic" Perspective on Immigration to the Americas

The mainstay of historical scholarship on immigration to the United States is the case study. Despite the numerous articles and books inspired by the social history that is no longer new, few syntheses have systematically brought together diffuse microlevel findings on common aspects of the migration experience. The exceptional overviews include Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life by Roger Daniels (1990) and The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America by John Bodnar (1985). Still another overview is Labor Migration in the Atlantic Economies: The European and North American Working Classes during the Period of Industrialization, edited by Dirk Hoerder (1985), with articles analyzing the impact of the international economy on migration in Europe and America. Similarly, editors Ida Altman and James Horn, in the volume To Make America, and Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke, in A Century of European Migrations, present articles by contributors who highlight overarching themes. The editors of both volumes emphasize the need to view the process of migration in a transnational rather than a national context. Altman and Horn call for the abandonment of traditional national perspectives that have artificially set Europe apart from America and the experiences of one colonizing nation from those of others (p. 22). Likewise this call for a trans-Atlantic perspective serves as the motif for Vecoli and Sinke who selected for their volume papers presented at a symposium held by the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota in 1986. There Frank Thistlethwaite reaffirmed that motif, which he had presented at an earlier conference in 1960. Vecoli regards him as a catalyst for subsequent explora-

Walter Anastazievsky, compiler, with the assistance of Roman Stepchuck. A Select Index to Svoboda. Volume Two: 1900 to 1907. Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, 1991. 410 pp.

Walter Anastazievsky, compiler, with the assistance of Roman Stepchuck. <i>A Select Index to Svoboda. Volume Two: 1900 to 1907</i>. Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, 1991. 410 pp.

Walter Anastas and Maria Woroby, compilers. A Select Index to Svoboda. Volume One: 1893-1899. Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, 1990. 387pp. Paperback, $25. each volume or both for $45.

Walter Anastas and Maria Woroby, compilers. <i>A Select Index to Svoboda. Volume One: 1893-1899</i>. Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, 1990. 387pp. Paperback, $25. each volume or both for $45.

The Immigration History Research Center: A Guide to Collections.

Journal Article The Immigration History Research Center: A Guide to Collections. Comp, and ed. by Suzanna Moody and Joel Wurl. Westport: Greenwood, 1991 and Italian American Material Culture: A Dictionary of Collections, Sites, and Festivals in the United States and Canada. Comp, by Margaret Hobbie. Westport: Greenwood, 1992 Get access George E. Pozzetta George E. Pozzetta University of Florida Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 79, Issue 4, March 1993, Pages 1726–1727, https://doi.org/10.2307/2080386 Published: 01 March 1993

The Immigration History Research Center: a guide to collections

Foreword The Immigration History Research Center: A Historical Profile and Prospective Glimpse Introduction General Collection Albanian American Collection Armenian American Collection Bulgarian and Macedonian American Collections Byelorussian American Collection Carpatho-Rusin American Collection Croatian American Collection Czech American Collection Estonian American Collection Finnish American Collection Greek American Collection Hungarian American Collection Italian American Collection Jewish American Collection Latvian American Collection Lithuanian American Collection Near Eastern American Collection Polish American Collection Romanian American Collection Russian American Collection Serbian American Collection Slovak American Collection Slovenian American Collection Ukrainian American Collection Appendixes IHRC Services and General Information Publications Index

The Immigration History Research Center as a source for Labor History research

The Immigration History Research Center as a source for Labor History research