Racial Politics in 19th Century California

An Asian-American lecture series at Princeton University reveals new aspects of the history of racism. The first lecture is Monday, September 30, at 4:30 p.m in McCormick 106, and the topic is on Chinese gold miners and racial politics in 19th century California.

Nonday, September 30, 2013
4:30 pm
McCormick 106
Mae Ngai
Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and
Professor of History, Columbia University
Chinese Goldminers and the Chinese Question in Pacific World Settler Colonies, 1848-1908

Mae M. Ngai is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. She is author of the award winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004) and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The Boston Review. Before becoming a historian she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. She is now working on Yellow and Gold: The Chinese Mining Diaspora, 1848-1908, a study of Chinese gold miners and racial politics in nineteenth-century California, The Australian colony of Victoria, and the South African Transvaal.

Another is Wednesday, October 9, 12:00-1:20, 101 Stanhope Hall