Adam McKeown

Associate professor of history, department of history

Trans-Pacific history; international identity documentation; the Chinese diaspora; and global approaches to history

Professor McKeown is currently working on a history of globalization since 1760.

A recent description of a course on approaches to international and global history illustrates some of his teaching interests: "Why do enormous disparities in wealth and social status exist across the world? This course will compare different historical explanations of this problem, develop an understanding of the broad links between different parts of the world, and examine some of the concepts that have fundamentally shaped our understanding of the world, such as modernization, the Third World , civilization, and globalization."

Professor McKeown's publications include Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (Columbia University Press, 2008) Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, Hawaii, 1900-1936 (University of Chicago Press, 2001); Global MIgration, 1846-1940," Journal of World History 15 (2004); and "Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949" in Journal of Asian Studies 58 (1999). He is co-editor with Matthew Connelly of "Columbia Studies in International and Global History", a book series at Columbia University Press.

He received a B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1987 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997. He joined the Columbia faculty in 2001.

Email: amm2009@columbia.edu