Suzanne Sinke

Professor of History
Suzy Sinke

Contact Information

Phone
(850) 644-9532

Suzanne M. Sinke received her PhD from the University of Minnesota. After several years of teaching at Clemson University, she joined the faculty at Florida State University in 2002. Sinke has earned two Fulbright teaching awards, first to the University of Tampere in Finland, and later a second to teach in Austria at the University of Salzburg in 2013. As a specialist in migration and gender studies in the U.S. context, she teaches a variety of courses in U.S. and comparative history. She is the author of Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920 (2002) and co-editor of three additional books, including Letters Across Borders:  The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants (2006) which showcased her interest in how scholars use letters as sources. Since fall 2018, she has served as editor for the Journal of American Ethnic History, a quarterly that covers the history of immigration and ethnicity in a North American context. Sinke's extensive list of journal articles includes publication venues such as International Migration Review, OAH Magazine, Gender Issues, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Immigrants and Minorities.

The Organization of American Historians promotes Sinke as one of its distinguished lecturers. She served as  a member and then co-chair of the AP U.S. History Curriculum Development Advisory Committee, as an executive board member and program co-chair for the Social Science History Association, and president of the Association for the Advancement of Dutch American Studies. Sinke's recent scholarship covers two topics:  1) the linkage of marriage and international migration across U.S. history from bride ships, male majorities, and anti-miscegenation policies in the colonial era to web-matchmaking, female majorities, and fiancée visas in the twenty-first century; and 2) the letters of an Austrian family that fled Nazi persecution, focusing especially on their epistolary strategies.  

Research Interests

Migration, Gender, U.S. History in Comparative Perspective

Books

Across Borders: Dutch Migration to North America and Australia

The Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies (AADAS) chose “across borders” as the theme for their 2010 biennial conference in part to reflect the literal passage across borders which this meeting in Canada entailed for AADAS members from the United States.

Letters Across Borders: The Epistolary Practices of International Migrants

This collection addresses the recent rebirth of interest in immigrant letters.

Dutch Immigrant Women in the United States, 1880-1920

In this deftly researched ethnographic portrait, Suzanne M. Sinke skillfully adapts the concept of social reproduction to examine the shifting gender roles of tens of thousands of Dutch Protestant women who crossed the Atlantic from 1880 to 1920 to make new homes in the United States.

A Century of European Migrations 1830-1930

From the Introduction by Rudolph J. Vecoli: "This volume is the outcome of a symposium held at the Spring Hilll Center, Wayzata, Minnesota, November 6-9, 1986 to mark the centennial of the Statue of Liberty and the twentieth anniversary of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.