Dr. Alison Efford

Dr. Alison EffordMarquette University

Sensenbrenner Hall, 303G

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-7863alison.efford@marquette.edu

Associate Professor

History

Alison 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 “biocultural” beings for whom social and cultural interactions shape embodied experiences.

Her first book, German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era (Cambridge University Press, 2013), addresses how German Americans contributed to the rise and fall of white commitment to black rights. In collaboration with Viktorija Bilić (Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee), Dr. Efford has published Radical Relationships: The Civil War–Era Correspondence of Mathilde Franziska Anneke (University of Georgia Press 2021) and the German version, Radikale Beziehungen: Die Briefkorrespondenz der Mathilde Franziska Anneke zur Zeit des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs (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 Immigration and Ethnic History Society and a book review editor for H-Transnational German Studies.

Public-facing video and audio:

“Ahead of the first GOP debate, take a look at the Wisconsin site where the party got its start,” WSCT-TV (2023).

Presentation for Historic Milwaukee, Inc. on Radical Relationships (2021).

On community engaged learning (2020).

Commentary on Rick Schaefer's Refugee Trilogy, Haggerty Museum of Art (2017).

Publications

“Women’s Empowerment through Strength Sports—and Its Limits: The Case of the German American Turners, 1880s–1920s,” in Gender and Power in Strength Sports, ed. Brigden, Forbis, and Hejtmanek (London: Routledge, 2023).

Edited and translated with Viktorija Bilic, Radikale Beziehungen: Die Briefkorrespondenz der Mathilde Franziska Anneke zur Zeit des amerikanischen Bürgerkriegs (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2023).

“Pandemic Parenting and the Lessons of Nineteenth-Century Romantic Friendship,” Nursing Clio, October 28, 2021.

Edited and translated with Viktorija Bilic, Radical Relationships: The Civil War–Era Correspondence of Mathilde Franziska Anneke (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2021).

“In-Class Career Discernment,” Inside Higher Education, May 12, 2021,

“Review Essay: Civil War–Era Immigration and the Imperial United States,” Journal of the Civil War Era 10 (June 2020): 233–53.

“What Historians Can Learn from Translators,” The American Historian, December 2019.

“The Arms Scandal of 1870–1872: Immigrant Liberal Republicans and America’s Place in the World,” in Reconstruction in a Globalizing World, ed. David Prior (New York: Fordham University Press, 2018), 94–120.

“Germans” and “Turners,” in The Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, ed. Amanda I. Seligman et al.

“The Appeal of Racial Neutrality in the Civil War–Era North: German Americans and the Democratic New Departure,” Journal of the Civil War Era 5 (2015): 68–96.

“Immigration and the Gettysburg Address: Nationalism and Equality at the Gates,” in The Gettysburg Address: Perspectives on Lincoln’s Greatest Speech, ed. Sean Conant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 211–32.

German Immigrants, Race, and Citizenship in the Civil War Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

“Race Should be as Unimportant as Ancestry: German Radicals and African American Citizenship in the Missouri Constitution of 1865,” Missouri Historical Review 104, no. 3 (2010): 138–58.