Andrew Klein
Andrew is a Ph.D. candidate researching the intertwined histories of urban development, U.S. empire, and social movements in California. More broadly, his work explores the competing land uses and rival visions of globalization that shaped capitalism in the Americas after the abolition of racial slavery.
His dissertation examines how global struggles over land, labor, and conquest transformed the social and ecological landscape of the Oakland-East Bay waterfront between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. He has written about California cities for outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Jacobin, and co-authored a report on the history of homelessness in Los Angeles for the Luskin Center for History and Policy.
Field of Study
Subfield
History of the United States and the World, History of Latin America, Ethnic Studies, Urban History, Labor History, Social History, Environmental History, Political Economy
Publications
Book Reviews
“Make Allies, Break Empires” [Simeon Man, Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific], Public Books, March 11, 2020
“And Cuba Shall Lead Them” [Teishan Latner, Cuban Revolution in America: Havana and the Making of a United States Left, 1968-1992], Public Books, April 12, 2019
Grants and Awards
University of California, Berkeley Bancroft Library Hill Fellowship, 2022-2023
Youngstown State University Center for Working Class Studies Conference Grant, 2022
UCLA Leslie W. and Linda Koepplin Fellowship in U.S. Immigrant History, 2021-2022
UC-Cuba Academic Initiative Research/Travel Fellowship, 2020
UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, 2019-2020
UCLA Graduate Summer Research Mentorship Program Fellowship, 2019
Conference Presentations
“Chinese Migrants, Moral Ecologies, and the Circuits of Empire in Nineteenth-Century Oakland”: Robert W. Reeder I Symposium: Transportation, Movement, and Mobility, Youngstown State University, October 2022
“California Land Struggles and the Historical Archive”: Department of Urban and Regional Planning, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, April 2022
“Cuba, Oakland, and the Hidden Routes of Neocolonialism”: UC-Cuba Academic Initiative conference, University of California, Merced, November 2021
“The History of Homelessness in Los Angeles”: Theory and Practice of Applied History Seminar, University of California, Los Angeles, May 2021
“House Keys and Handcuffs: Skid Row and the Contested Rise of Poverty Containment in Los Angeles”: Urban History Association annual conference, Detroit, October 2020 (conference postponed due to pandemic)
“Writing Transnational Histories of Cuba and Empire”: UC-Cuba Academic Initiative: Caribbean Transnational Synergies conference, University of California, Irvine, February 2020
Advisors
Robin D.G. Kelley (Chair), Peter James Hudson, Toby Higbie, Ananya Roy
Degrees
Certificate in Economic Research Methods, Cornell History of Capitalism Initiative, 2021
M.A. in History, UCLA, 2019
B.A. in Social Studies, Harvard Unitersity, 2012