The Trump administration is bringing its nostalgia for history to the immigration policy arena. This week acting director of USCIS Ken Cuccinelli held a press conference announcing the agency’s new interpretation of “public charge,” which it is using to curtail…
Hidetaka Hirota, “No Frontiers but Those of Humanity Itself: Immigration Reform in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts.”
One of the most important developments in modern America is the widening gap between citizens and noncitizens. Citizenship status in many ways determines the rights and privileges of people in the United States today. But in the nineteenth century the…
Melanie Simone Lorenz, “Promoting immigration in 19th century America”
Today it is hard to remember that historically American states and territories sought actively to attract immigration. Even as nativism surged in the nineteenth century, the distinct economic needs of several Midwestern and western states and territories shaped their attitude…
Evan Turiano, “Teaching Fiction in Immigration History: Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish”
An advanced undergraduate seminar on United States immigration history presents an intimidating problem of scale. There is so much relevant content that it may seem impossible to devote time to particular, non-representative immigrant experiences, especially fictional ones. However, including fiction…
Asher Lubotzky, “We Become the Scape-Goat”: African Voices at Indiana University in the 1960s
Since the 1950s, Indiana University (IU) has gone through a remarkable transformation in terms of its foreign student population. In a few decades, IU transformed itself from an ‘All-American’ school’ into an international hub. By 1977, the number of international…
Carl Lindskoog, “(Im)migration Detention: A Selective Bibliography”
This bibliography supplements an essay published in the Summer 2019 issue of the Immigration and Ethnic History Newsletter (available now to IEHS members and freely available online after a one-year delay). As the essay explains, and this list shows, scholars…
JoAnn LoSavio, “Educated Professionals: Thai Women in Transnational Perspective”
“Human-trafficking,” “exploitation,” and “victim” are three words that have ruined how the world sees Thai women. These words have hidden them, covered them like invisible ink. They posit Thai women as passive and exotic, or worse as defeated, abused casualties…
Wanted: Book Review Editor, Journal of American Ethnic History
The Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS) is now seeking a Book Review Editor (BRE) for its quarterly Journal of American Ethnic History (JAEH). The BRE is responsible for selecting, requesting, receiving, and distributing books for review; identifying and recruiting…
IEHS 2019 Award winners
Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Prize: Ana Raquel Minian, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration Honorable Mention: Simeon Man, Soldiering Through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific IEHS First Book Award: Rosina Lozano, An American Language: The History of…
IEHS Members Encouraged to Sign-Up for Expert Witness Database at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies
By Andy Urban and Elliott Young The United States is on track to incarcerate more immigrants this year for longer than ever before. Women, men, children, infants, and entire families have been caught in the jaws of the immigrant detention…
