Julie Greene specializes in United States labor and working-class history. Her research and teaching interests span across immigration and political history, the history of empire, and transnational approaches to the history of the Americas. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal (Penguin Press, 2009), The Organization of American Historians awarded The Canal Builders its 2009 James A. Rawley Prize for the best book on the history of race relations. Greene’s articles include "Spaniards on the Silver Roll: Liminality and Labor Troubles in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-1914," in International Labor and Working-Class History (Fall 2004) and "The Labor of Empire: Recent Scholarship on U.S. History and Imperialism," in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (Summer 2004). She is also author of Pure and Simple Politics: The American Federation of Labor and Political Activism, 1881-1917 (Cambridge, 1998); co-editor, with Eric Arnesen and Bruce Laurie, of Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Diversity of the Working-Class Experience (Illinois, 1998); and associate editor, with Eileen Boris, John French, Joan Sangster, and Shelton Stromquist (with Leon Fink as editor), of Workers, the Nation-State, and Beyond: Essays in the Labor History of the Americas (Oxford University Press, 2011). The latter book includes Greene’s essay, “Historians of the World: Transnational Forces, Nation-States, and the Practice of United States History.”

“Just as building the Panama Canal was a miracle of modern engineering, so is The Canal Builders a marvel of historical recreation. With precision and compassion, Julie Greene guides us through the complex, contentious world of the roughnecks who muscled their way through the Isthmus in the early days of the last century. A compelling story of imperial ambition, class conflict, racial injustice, and the ordinary men and women who remade the map of the world.”