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Distinguished author, immigration expert to present lecture

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Posted on Tuesday, October 16, 2018

NEW WILMINGTON, PA – Award-winning author, professor and immigration expert Alan Kraut will present his lecture “‘Abnormally Twisted’ and ‘Unassimilable’: Anti-Semitic Nativism in an Era of Immigration Restriction, 1890-1924” at 11:45 a.m. Friday, Nov. 9, in the Witherspoon Rooms of Westminster’s McKelvey Campus Center.

Kraut, university professor and professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C., is a specialist in U.S. immigration and ethnic history, as well as the history of American medicine and public health.

He is a former president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the largest professional association dedicated to American history in the country. His lecture will be presented as part of the OAH’s Distinguished Lectureship Program.

Kraut continues to work with the OAH to promote excellence in the scholarship, teaching and presentation of American history and to encourage wide discussion of historical questions.

Aside from his work with the OAH, Kraut has published numerous books on immigration history and on refugees and public health policy. Among others, his publications include “The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880–1921,” “Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes, and the ‘Immigrant Menace’” and “Goldberger’s War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader,” which won the Henry Adams Prize from the Society for History in the Federal Government, the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize from the Public Health Association and the Watson Davis and Helen Miles Davis Prize from the History of Science Society.

Kraut is also the chair of the History Advisory Committee of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and is a past president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, from which he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017.

Kraut has been an historical consultant on documentaries related to immigration history and the history of medicine broadcast on PBS, BBC, and the History Channel. Most recently he was an adviser on the PBS documentary “Forgotten Ellis Island: The Extraordinary Story of America’s Immigrant Hospital.”

This lecture is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Department of History, the First-Year Program, Westminster’s chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, and Heinz programming funds.

For more information, contact Angela Lahr, associate professor of history, at lahram@westminster.edu.