Professor Tyler Anbinder is a specialist in nineteenth-century American politics and the history of immigration and ethnicity in American life. His first book, Nativism and Slavery, analyzed the role of the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know Nothing party on the political crisis that led to the Civil War. His most recent book, Five Points, traced the history of nineteenth-century America's most infamous immigrant slum, focusing in particular on tenement life, inter-ethnic relations, and ethnic politics. Professor Anbinder has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and held the Fulbright Thomas Jefferson Chair in American History at the University of Utrecht. He also served as a historical consultant to Martin Scorsese for the making of The Gangs of New York. His current research includes an NEH funded study of Irish immigrant savings habits and a book-length study of immigrant life in New York City from the first Dutch settlers to the present. (Complete C.V.)

 

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University, 1990.

Publications

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.

“Which Irish Men and Women Immigrated to the United States During the Great Famine Migration of 1846-54?” Co-authored with GW undergraduate Hope McCaffrey, Irish Historical Studies 39 (Nov. 2015): 620-642.

“Irish Origins and the Shaping of Immigrant Life in Savannah on the Eve of the Civil War.” Journal of American Ethnic History 35 (Fall 2015): 5-37

“‘Peaceably If We Can, Forcibly If We Must’: Immigrants and Popular Politics in Pre-Civil War New York,” in Practicing Democracy: Popular Politics in the United States from the Constitution to the Civil War, Daniel Peart and Adam I. P. Smith, eds. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2015), 196-221.

“Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants and the Making of American Immigration History,” Journal of American Ethnic History 23 (Spring 2013): 19-25.

"Moving Beyond 'Rags to Riches': New York's Irish Famine Immigrants and their Surprising Savings Accounts," Journal of American History 99 (December 2012): 741-770.

"Saving Grace: The Emigrant Savings Bank and Its Depositors." In Catholics in New York: Society, Culture, and Politics, 1808-1946, ed. Terry Golway, 83-92. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.

"Isaiah Rynders and the Ironies of Popular Democracy in Antebellum New York." In Contested Democracy: Freedom, Race, and Power in American History, ed. Manisha Sinha and Penny Von Eschen, 31-53. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.

"Which Poor Man's Fight? Immigrants and the Federal Conscription of 1863." Civil War History 52 (December 2006): 344-372. Winner, John T. Hubbell Prize for the best article in Civil War History in 2006.

"Nativism and Prejudice Against Immigrants: An Historiographic Assessment." In A Companion to American Immigration, ed. Reed Ueda, 177-201. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006.

"From Famine to Five Points: Lord Lansdowne's Irish Tenants Encounter North America's Most Notorious Slum." The American Historical Review 107 (April 2002): 351-387.

Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York City Neighborhood that Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World's Most Notorious Slum. New York: Free Press, 2001. Named a Notable Book by the New York Times (2001) and one of "Twenty-Five Books to Remember" by the New York Public Library (2001).

"Lord Palmerston and the Irish Famine Emigration." The (Cambridge) Historical Journal 44 (Summer 2001): 441-469.

"Ulysses S. Grant, Nativist." Civil War History 43 (June 1997): 119-140.

"'Boss' Tweed: Nativist," Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Spring 1995): 109-116.

Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Winner, 1993, Avery Craven Prize of the Organization of American Historians for the most original book on the coming of the Civil War, the Civil War years, or the Era of Reconstruction.

 

Classes Taught
Hist 2305 Majors Introdictory Seminar
Hist 2312: The Civil War and Reconstruction
Hist 3311: The Jacksonian Era and the Rise of Mass Politics
Hist 3312: The Civil War and Reconstruction
Hist 3366: Immigration, Ethnicity, and the American Experience
Hist 4098W: Thesis Seminar for the History Major
Hist 6360: Immigration and Ethnicity in the United State
Hist 6006: Teaching History
Hist 6310: Readings in 19th-Century American History
Hist 6311: The Era of the Civil War, 1850-1877