12 Facts About Donna Gabaccia

Donna Rae Gabaccia was born on 1949 and is an American historian who studies international migration, with an emphasis on cultural exchange, such as food and from a gendered perspective.

Donna Rae Gabaccia was born in 1949 and grew up in rural New York State.

Donna Gabaccia then went on to complete her PhD at the University of Michigan in 1979 and did post-doctoral studies in Germany at the Free University of Berlin's John F Kennedy Institute for North American Studies.

Donna Gabaccia worked with projects with Amerika Haus Berlin and several museums.

Two of Donna Gabaccia's groundbreaking books, which both integrated women into migration studies and demonstrated the importance of an interdisciplinary approach were Immigrant Women in the United States: A Selectively Annotated Multidisciplinary Bibliography and Seeking Common Ground: Multidisciplinary Studies of Immigrant Women in the United States.

In 1990, Donna Gabaccia initiated a world-wide research network, "Italians Everywhere" to facilitate migration study for the period 1870 to 1970 of emigration from Italy.

Donna Gabaccia added depth to the understanding of migration, by showing that it was not a single national story; that destinations were not always finite but often immigrants moved back and forth between locations; and that assimilation was much more complex than a one-directional transfer of culture.

Donna Gabaccia argued that the study of earlier migrations, not only showed that globalization was not a new phenomenon but that it was unclear whether it was either a permanent shift in cultural practices, sustainable over time, or whether it would lead to the demise of the nation-state.

Donna Gabaccia pointed to the development of diaspora populations of earlier times of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, questioning whether transnationalism was an ideological belief held by migrants, or whether it had any permanency based on historical precedent.

From 1992 to 2003, Gabaccia was the Charles H Stone Professor of American History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, taking the Andrew Mellon Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh in 2003.

Donna Gabaccia's work evaluated hierarchies of power and it fluctuations upon the agency among migrating people.

Donna Gabaccia studied the exchange of culture that is evident in food.