Ann Fleming

My research focuses on the infrastructure that supported pathways of migration from Europe to the United States. Most studies on immigration to North America during the first period of mass migration, from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, begin and end at coastlines. Yet this migration was part of a complex operation that extended far into the European and North American interiors. State commissioners in the Midwest wanted to increase state population, industrialists sought a larger workforce, European and American shipping and railroad firms profited off this migration, and immigrants themselves aimed to strengthen their growing communities by adding to their numbers. Their actions in pursuit of these interests, taken together, constitute the “business of migration.” I investigate these various “agents” of migration to the American Midwest, uncovering the global dimensions laden within one region’s efforts to claim its share of migrants in the first era of mass migration to North America and retain them into the era of immigration restriction. How did they support the business of migration, and how did strategies to maintain it evolve amidst changing immigrant demographics and increasing calls for federal restriction?

To address these questions, I not only draw from sources of statesmen and entrepreneurs across two continents, but also German-Americans of various cultural and religious backgrounds. The largest group to immigrate to the Midwest, German speakers remained the most sizeable immigrant population to the United States at almost six million arrivals from 1840 to 1930. Their substantial immigration and protest of restriction laws over these years combined with other actors’ endeavors placed the Midwest in a global system of economic interaction sustained by migration.

Dissertation Committee: Dr. Gregor Thum (chair), Dr. Laura Gotkowitz, Dr. Alex Finley, Dr. Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State)

CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS 
March 2021
Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Organization Grad Expo
Outstanding Presenter Prize
“Galvanizing Germantown: The Politicization of Louisville’s German Community, 1848-1855.” Pittsburgh, PA.

April 2019
Graduate Student History Conference
“The League of Nations and the Jewish Refugee Crisis: Shifting Historiography on the International World Order.” Morgantown, WV.

April 2019
Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference
“The Lost Colony: Visiting Vandalia through the Gateway of Archives.” Morgantown, WV

March 2017
Gender Studies Conference
“The Good Earth: A Comparison of Farm Women in China and Appalachia in the Early Twentieth Century.” Buckhannon, WV.

September 2016
Pearl S. Buck Living Gateway Conference
“The Good Earth: A Comparison of Farm Women in China and Appalachia in the Early Twentieth Century.” Morgantown, WV.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Spring 2020
ULIB-101: Introduction to Library Research (Primary Instructor, WVU)
Spring 2019
HIST-221: History of Modern Germany (Teaching Assistant, WVU)
Fall and Spring 2018/2019
ULIB-204: Storytelling with Archives (Co-instructor, WVU)

GUEST LECTURES
February 2018
HIST-102: “Post-Second World War: The Marshall Plan and Efforts for Western European Recovery,” U.S. History, Reconstruction to the Present
October 2017
HIST-121: “The Economic and Social Effects of the Black Death,” History of Western Civilization to the Age of Absolutism
September 2017
HIST-121: “The Feudal System and its Functions,” History of Western Civilization to the Age of Absolutism

STUDENT SERVICE 
2021-2022 
Vice-President of the History Graduate Student Organization, University of Pittsburgh

2019-2020 
Vice-President of the History Graduate Student Association, West Virginia University

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS
German Studies Association Central European History Society

FIELDS

• 19th Century U.S. History
• U.S. Immigration History
• Migration History
• Modern German History
• German-America