As a graduate student, I became fascinated by spatial history and immigration during the Progressive Era. I wanted to understand how recent immigrants living in large cities in this era described their surroundings, and wondered what these descriptions would reveal…
Immigration historians in the news 2018
Immigration, the hallmark issue of the Trump presidency, was front page news all year. Assaults on birthright citizenship, Trump’s family separation policy, a new proposed public charge rule, the asylum ban, the lowest refugee cap ever, fearmongering the migrant caravan,…
In 2017 IEHS scholars made history
In 2017, historians entered the fray. Immigration and ethnic history society scholars, especially, have been called to bring historical thinking and analysis to policy issues and public debates about immigration, citizenship, borders, white supremacy, and vulnerable and marginalized communities. Not…
Eladio Bobadilla, “It’s Giving Back to the Community”: Historians of race and ethnicity should take sports seriously
We are living in extraordinary times. The late historian Howard Zinn once remarked that the world we live in is “topsy-turvy.” But Zinn died during the presidency of Barack Obama. The world, it might have seemed, was tentatively moving in…
Krystyn Moon, “Scottish white ethnic revivalism and usable pasts in Alexandria, Virginia”
Although the commemoration of the “Lost Cause” is often the focus of today’s discussions of white supremacy, these celebrations are not the only usable past embraced in the United States to promote a racist agenda.[1] The New York Times in…
