By Anna J. Cook

This week, the MHS staff welcomes Brian Gratton, Professor of History at Arizona State University, as the recipient of our 2010-2011 Twentieth-Century History Fellowship. Dr. Gratton, who received his Ph.D. in 1980 from Boston University, studies immigration and ethnicity in the United States, Latin America, and Europe. His recent publications and research focus on the experience of immigrant elders, 1880 to the present, and on the teaching of U.S. history with a particular emphasis on the American Southwest.

Dr. Gratton’s MHS fellowship project, titled “Henry Cabot Lodge and the Politics of Immigration Restriction,” examines the role of Massachusetts historian and politician Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) in Progressive-era battles over legal restrictions on immigration. Lodge fought for three decades in support immigration restriction, a goal finally realized in the Emergency Quota Act of 1921, which dramatically reduced the number of immigrants streaming into the United States. Using Lodge as an entry-point for reconstructing the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century debates about immigration, Gratton hopes to better illuminate the political thinking among Republicans, Lodge’s party, on race and ethnicity in politics during this period. He will be working primarily with the Henry Cabot Lodge papers.

Dr. Gratton will be giving a brown bag lunch talk about his research at the MHS on Wednesday 16 March from 12:00-1:00pm. The event is free and open to the public.

The MHS staff welcomes Dr. Gratton back to Boston and wishes him a fruitful research visit.