Adam McKeown

Professor of History, Department of History

The history of the United States and East Asia; Chinese diaspora; migration control; global history

Professor McKeown teaches courses on the history of globalization, the history of world migration, and international law in East Asia. A recent description of a course on globalization in history illustrates some of his teaching interests: “Why do enormous disparities in wealth and social status exist across the world? Does globalization cause homogenization or fragmentation? How did much of the world come to be grouped into categories like ‘third world,’ or developed and underdeveloped? Are nation-states a product of or an obstacle to global integration?” According to Professor McKeown, these questions and more will be addressed by looking at globalization as a long-term process taking place at least since the industrial revolution, ca. 1800, but with roots going back more than 600 years.

Professor McKeown’s publications include Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (Columbia University Press, 2008); “Periodizing Globalization,” History Workshop Journal 63 (2007); “Global Migration, 1846–1940,” Journal of World History 15 (2004); and Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900–1936 (University of Chicago Press, 2001). He is working on a history of globalization since 1760. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1997 and joined the Columbia faculty in 2001.

Email: amm2009@columbia.edu