UMD Professor Julie Greene Wins 2018 China Residency Exchange Fellowship

History professor will teach 10-day seminar in China on social responses to American industrialization.

Julie Greene, professor of history and founding co-director of the Center for Global Migration Studies (CGMS), has received the 2018 China Residency at Sichuan University from the the Organization of American Historians (OAH) and the American History Research Association of China. Greene's residency will focus on the social response to American industrialization from 1877 to 1930. From June 8-16, 2018, Greene will present lectures, lead seminar discussions for graduate students and faculty and connect with colleagues at Sichuan University

Greene is one of three U.S. scholars selected to participate in the program.  Three Chinese scholars were also selected to receive funding to attend the 2018 OAH annual meeting and spend time in residence at a U.S. university following the meeting.

Greene is a leading expert on the history of labor and immigration. Her most recent award-winning book, “The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal”  (Penguin Press, 2009), focuses on the tens of thousands of working men and women who traveled from all around the world to live and labor on the canal project.

“My work is increasingly concerned with global issues,” she said. “It will be especially exciting to discuss labor history in China, where the changes in the economy and labor force have been so dramatic.”

Building an international network of experts on labor and migration is an important part of her role at CGMS. On her way to Chengdu, Greene will stop in Hong Kong to give a talk on the history of labor migration at Hong Kong University and meet with a non-governmental organization that studies labor relations in China.

Greene is particularly interested to travel to China because of the ways Chinese immigration to the U.S. shaped this country’s immigration system. Chinese immigrants were the first group of people to be singled out and racially excluded by immigration laws.

“I am eager to travel to Sichuan University and collaborate with scholars who examine the history of labor and immigration from a very different perspective,” Greene says.