Walter D. Kamphoefner

Walter D. Kamphoefner has taught at Texas A&M University since 1988 and has published widely on immigration and ethnicity, with articles in four languages and three authored or coedited books in German and English. Since his pioneering transatlantic study, The Westfalians: From Germany to Missouri (1987), he has worked extensively with immigrant letters, and on bilingual education and the immigrant language transition. While his research focuses mainly on Germans, he regularly teaches a multi-ethnic course on immigration past and present.

Lecture topics:

• What's New about the Newest Immigration? Two Centuries of Historical Perspective
• Elvis and Other Germans: Some Observations and Modest Proposals on the Writing of Ethnic History
• German Texans: Model Minority or Reluctant Americanizers?
• What German Americans Fought For: Evidence from their Civil War Letters

Viewed Saturday, November 21, 2009