Participant Info

First Name
Lauren
Last Name
Braun-Strumfels
Affiliation
Raritan Valley Community College
Website URL
www.laurenbraunstrumfels.com
Keywords
US immigration, Italian migration, Italian-American relations, US immigration policy, gatekeeping, Progressive era
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

My values of cultivating joy, community, and international connections motivate my research and writing. I’m a historian working at the intersection of US immigration policy and Italian migration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I focus on the earliest years of national border controls as they emerged simultaneously in Italy and the US. I argue in all of my work that Italy and Italian diplomatic archives (which captured the work and the worries of Italian diplomats and consuls stationed in the US from the 1890s to World War I) provide an essential perspective on the creation of US immigration policy. This period fundamentally shaped ideas and practices reflected to this day of the role of governments in controlling borders. In other words, the connection between the two nations forged through migration is profoundly illuminating – and necessary – for historians, policy-makers and advocates, migrants and citizens, to understand.

Recent Publications

Lauren Braun-Strumfels and  Tim Herbert, “Terminal Does Not Mean Dead: Why the History MA Deserves our Attention,” Perspectives on History (May 2021)

“Binational Gatekeepers: The Italian Government and U.S. Border Enforcement in the 1890s” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 18:1 (March 2021): 10-37 https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-8767314

“Remote Reflections: Adapting to the Research Conditions at Hand,” Perspectives Daily: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association  (December 2020) 

“Why Does This Class Matter Anyway? Tuning History in General Education Courses,” World History Connected 13:2 (June 2016) 

Media Coverage
nj.com
Country Focus
United States and Italy
Expertise by Geography
United States, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Diplomacy, Labor, Migration & Immigration