Dr. Alison Efford糖心传媒Sensenbrenner Hall, 303G
MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-7863alison.efford@marquette.eduAlison Clark Efford is a historian of immigration and the nineteenth-century United States. Her earlier work focuses on German immigration, race, and power, and she is increasingly finding inspiration in the history of emotion, which explore the ways in which humans are 鈥渂iocultural鈥� beings for whom social and cultural interactions shape embodied experiences.
Her first book, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), addresses how German Americans contributed to the rise and fall of white commitment to black rights. In collaboration with Viktorija Bili膰 (Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Wisconsin 鈥� Milwaukee), Dr. Efford has published (University of Georgia Press 2021) and the German version, (Franz Steiner Verlay, 2023). The volumes present the correspondence of the important German American abolitionist and suffragist, featuring her intense, cohabiting romantic friendship with Mary Booth. Other essays and articles have appeared in journals such as The Missouri Historical Review, the Journal of the Civil War Era, several edited collections, and the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee.
Dr. Efford is currently working on a project that uses the heavily documented phenomenon of immigrant suicide to apply new insights from the history of emotions to the experience and politics of immigrant suffering. With community studies of German, Jewish Eastern European, Japanese, and Italian immigrants, her book both examines intensely personal experiences of despair and addresses public debates over immigrant emotions. Ultimately, American interpretations of immigrant emotions contributed to the movement to exclude certain groups from the United States.
As a teacher, Dr. Efford has partnered with several local schools to bring community-engaged learning to her students and is experimenting with in-class career discernment. Her work was recognized by a teaching award from the College of Arts and Sciences. She further serves as newsletter editor for the and a book review editor for .
Public-facing video and audio:
WSCT-TV (2023).
(2021).
(2020).
, Haggerty Museum of Art (2017).
鈥淲omen鈥檚 Empowerment through Strength Sports鈥攁nd Its Limits: The Case of the German American Turners, 1880s鈥�1920s,鈥� in , ed. Brigden, Forbis, and Hejtmanek (London: Routledge, 2023).
Edited and translated with Viktorija Bilic, (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2023).
Nursing Clio, October 28, 2021.
Edited and translated with Viktorija Bilic, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021).
Inside Higher Education, May 12, 2021,
鈥淩eview Essay: Civil War鈥揈ra Immigration and the Imperial United States,鈥� Journal of the Civil War Era 10 (June 2020): 233鈥�53.
鈥淲hat Historians Can Learn from Translators,鈥� The American Historian, December 2019.
鈥淭he Arms Scandal of 1870鈥�1872: Immigrant Liberal Republicans and America鈥檚 Place in the World,鈥� in Reconstruction in a Globalizing World, ed. David Prior (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), 94鈥�120.
and in The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, ed. Amanda I. Seligman et al.
鈥淭he Appeal of Racial Neutrality in the Civil War鈥揈ra North: German Americans and the Democratic New Departure,鈥� Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (2015): 68鈥�96.
鈥淚mmigration and the Gettysburg Address: Nationalism and Equality at the Gates,鈥� in The Gettysburg Address: Perspectives on Lincoln鈥檚 Greatest Speech, ed. Sean Conant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 211鈥�32.
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
鈥淩ace Should be as Unimportant as Ancestry: German Radicals and African American Citizenship in the Missouri Constitution of 1865,鈥� Missouri Historical Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 138鈥�58.
