Andrew Urban

Andrew Urban is an Associate Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. His first book, Brokering Servitude (NYU Press, 2018), examines how federal immigration policies and private intermediaries shaped labor markets for domestic service in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States, and dictated the contractual conditions under which migration occurred. Andy’s second book will be a history of Seabrook Farms, a frozen foods agribusiness and company town in southern New Jersey that recruited incarcerated Japanese Americans, guestworkers from the British West Indies, and European Displaced Persons and stateless Japanese Peruvians during the 1940s.

Andy’s research on Seabrook Farms is also the subject of an online exhibition, “Invisible Restraints,” hosted by the New Jersey Digital Highway, which he curated with Rutgers’ students. With students, Andy also curated the exhibition, “Chinese Exclusion in New Jersey,” which uses original documents from the National Archives to examine how laws restrict the entry of Chinese immigrants affected the Chinese community in New Jersey.

Andy’s scholarly writing has appeared in the Journal of Asian American Studies, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of American History, Journal of Policy History, Gender and History, The Public Historian, and American Studies. His opinion pieces have been published by the Washington Post, Newark Star-Ledger, Public Radio International, and Inside Higher Ed, among other outlets.