Oscar Handlin

Oscar Handlin
Born	(1915-09-29)September 29, 1915 New York City, US
Died	September 20, 2011(2011-09-20) (aged 95) Cambridge, Massachusetts, US
Spouses	Mary Flug ​ ​ (m. 1937; died 1976)​ Lilian Bombach ​ (m. 1977)​
Children	3, including David P. Handlin
Awards	Pulitzer Prize (1952)
Academic background
Education	Brooklyn College (BA) Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Academic advisors	Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	American history ethnic history social history
Institutions	Harvard University
Doctoral students	Bernard Bailyn[1] Gunther Barth[2] Rowland Berthoff[3] Richard Bushman[1] Martin Duberman[1] Robert M. Fogelson Roger Lane Richard Sennett[1] Anne Firor Scott[4] Barbara Miller Solomon[5] Stephan Thernstrom[1]
Notable students	Morton Keller [Wikidata][6] David Rothman
Main interests	History of immigration to the United States
Notable works	The Uprooted (1951)

Oscar Handlin (September 29, 1915 – September 20, 2011) was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history, virtually inventing the field of immigration history in the 1950s. Handlin won the 1952 Pulitzer Prize for History for The Uprooted (1951).^[7][8] Handlin's 1965 testimony before Congress was played an important role in passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that abolished the discriminatory immigration quota system. According to historian James Grossman, "He reoriented the whole picture of the American story from the view that America was built on the spirit of the Wild West, to the idea that we are a nation of immigrants."^[9]