Mae Ngai, A Long History of Unauthorized Immigration Keynote: Who Makes America a Nation of Immigrants?

Mae M. Ngai is a professor of history and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University. She is a US legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. Mae is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, 2004), which won six awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize from the Organization of American Historians; and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). Professor Ngai has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2009-10); the Institute for Advanced Study (2009-10); the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2003-04); the Huntington Library (2006); NYU Law School (1999-2000). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and the Boston Review.

The history of immigration in the United States is one of bans, quotas, restrictions, and exclusions. Immigrants have negotiated inconsistent and discriminatory definitions of authorized and unauthorized belonging and targeted restrictions on citizenship since the nation’s founding. This symposium brings together scholars who will illuminate the historical experiences of Asian American, Latinx, African American, Muslim, Jewish, gendered, and sexualized immigrants from the late-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

Free and open to the public.

This LSA Bicentennial Theme Semester event is presented with support from the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts and the University of Michigan Bicentennial Office. Additional support provided by Afroamerican and African Studies; American Culture; Anthropology; Arab and Muslim American Studies; Asian, Pacific Islander American Studies; Bentley Historical Library; Comparative Literature; Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies; English Language and Literature; Frankel Center for Judaic Studies; History; Institute for the Humanities; Latino/a Studies; Latinx Studies Workshop; Office of Research; Rackham Graduate School Dean’s Office; Romance Languages and Literatures; and William L. Clements Library.