After painstakingly building a wall of laws to exclude Asian immigrants in the late nineteenth century, how and why did the U.S. repeal exclusion of Asians in the mid-twentieth century? That’s the question Jane Hong unpacks with great skill and…
Authors on Authors: Jane Hong Interviews Lucy Salyer
In this elegantly written book, Lucy Salyer uses the 1867 Fenian Revolt and the international crisis it provoked to explore a little-known episode in the history of expatriation. With great skill and nuance, Salyer traces the diplomatic and legal crisis…
Threat of Dissent: a Reflection on Writing the Book I Wanted to Read
In June 2020, as COVID-19 ravaged New York City leaving no community, neighborhood, and apartment building untouched, including my own, I opened a large cardboard box and held my book in my hands for the first time. Threat of Dissent:…
International Students as Political Pawns . . . Again
On July 6, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an order[1] requiring international students at institutions of higher education to enroll in face-to-face classes for the fall semester or return to their home countries. Rescinded a week…
Blaming “Outside Agitators” for Street Protests Is Not a Distraction—It’s an American Call to Arms
IEHS Board statement in support of the George Floyd demonstrations and #BlackLivesMatter
We, the scholars of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, express our outrage over the murders and police killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor among countless others. We condemn the underlying forces of white supremacy and state…
Beatrix Hoffman, “Pandemic Reading: 10 Books on Health and Immigration History”
The covid-19 pandemic has fueled racism and xenophobia, echoing past pandemics. Beatrix Hoffman has compiled a reading list on U.S. immigration, public health, and the history of medicine to help make sense of our current moment. Below are 10 must-read…
Online Series on Recently Published Books: Jane Hong and Gerry Cadava 6/12 4pm EST
The Immigration and Ethnic History Society is pleased to announce the first in our new Online Series on Recently Published Books: Jane Hong, Occidental College, Opening the Gates to Asia Gerry Cadava, Northwestern University, The Hispanic Republican Moderated by Torrie Hester, Saint Louis University June 12 | 4:00-5:00 pm EST…
Yukako Otori, “A Girl Without a Country”
On April 18, 1905, the Board of Special Inquiry at the port of Boston excluded Mariam Zartarian, age 15, because she was afflicted with trachoma, an eye infection. The Board also decided to hold Almas Zartarian, Mariam’s mother. Since 1889,…
Emiliano Aguilar Jr., “’Many people opted to leave’: The Repatriation Movement in East Chicago, Indiana”
When I talked to him on the phone, Frederick Maravilla was ninety-nine years old, and was a captivating storyteller. I sat at the kitchen table in my studio apartment, listening to stories of his eventful life growing up in a…
