He is one of the United States' leading historians of race, citizenship, and American nationhood.[4] A historian of the twentieth-century United States, he is particularly interested in three major areas of inquiry: 1) immigration, race, and nationality; 2) the significance of class in social and political life; and 3) social movements, popular politics, and the state. Gerstle is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books and the author of more than thirty articles on these topics.[5]
He has served as the Annenberg Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and as a Visiting Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (École des hautes études en sciences sociales aka EHESS) in Paris. In addition to France, he has lectured throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Brazil, Japan, and South Africa. Gerstle has also lectured widely to the general public, and is often consulted by newspaper reporters, magazine writers, and television producers on matters pertinent to his areas of historical expertise. In May 2007, Gerstle testified on questions of immigration before the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill.[5]
He also co-edits a book series, Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America, which has published more than thirty books, many of them prizewinners.[6] He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of American History and the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Past & Present.[7]
Honors
His book, American Crucible, received the 2001 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award for outstanding book on US immigration and ethnic history,[8] and was named by NPR book critic, Maureen Corrigan, one of 2008's Best Books for a Transformative New Year.[9] He has received numerous fellowships, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, and a Membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.