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About

Dr. Luke Ritter

Dr. Luke Ritter is Assistant Professor of American History at St. Louis Community College – Forest Park. He is the author of Inventing America’s First Immigration Crisis: Political Nativism in the Antebellum West (Fordham, 2021) and the editor of American Conspiracism: An Interdisciplinary Exploration (Routledge, 2024). 

Available Presentations

The St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey

A group of scientists and citizens in St. Louis collected over 320,000 baby teeth between 1958 and 1969. Historian Luke Ritter explores the surprising historical connections between St. Louis, baby teeth, and the Nuclear Arms Race.

Inventing Immigration Crises in 19th-Century Missouri

Who counts as an American? It was a question that plagued nineteenth-century politics, as German and Irish immigrants arrived in unprecedented numbers. On an election day in 1854, St. Louis witnessed one of the nation’s largest anti-immigrant riots. Rioters sabotaged an election and murdered at least ten people. Historian Luke Ritter explains how American-immigrant tensions in Missouri manifested deeply felt anxieties about American identity and democracy amid rapid demographic change. He identifies patterns of behavior that have persisted across time and analyzes U.S. immigration policies, both past and present.