Series: American Crossroads

What was the longest and harshest medical quarantine in modern history, and how did people survive it? In Hawaiʻi beginning in 1866, men, women, and children suspected of having leprosy were removed from their families. Most were sentenced over the next century to lifelong exile at an isolated settlement. Thousands of photographs taken of their skin provided forceful, if conflicting,...

An international history of radical movements and their convergences during the Mexican Revolution The Mexican Revolution was a global event that catalysed international radicals in unexpected sites and struggles. Tracing the paths of figures like Black American artist Elizabeth Catlett, Indian anti-colonial activist M.N. Roy, Mexican revolutionary leader Ricardo Flores Magón, Okinawan migrant organiser Paul Shinsei Kōchi, and Soviet feminist...

References to the Indian Wars, those conflicts that accompanied US continental expansion, suffuse American military history. From Black Hawk helicopters to the paratroopers that shout “Geronimo” as they jump from airplanes, the figure of the Indian has been indelibly linked with warfare. In Indian Wars Everywhere, Stefan Aune shows how these resonances signal a deeper history, one in which the...

One of Smithsonian Magazine's Favourite Books of 2022 This history reveals how radical threats to the United States empire became seditious threats to national security and exposes the antiradical and colonial origins of anti-Asian racism. Menace to Empire transforms familiar themes in American history. This profoundly ambitious history of race and empire traces both the colonial violence and the anticolonial...

The period between the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and US annexation (1893–98) is often framed as an inevitable step of American expansion—but it was never a foregone conclusion. By pairing the intimate and epic together in critical juxtaposition, Christen T. Sasaki reveals the unstable nature not just of the coup state but of the US empire itself. The...

The period between the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and US annexation (1893–98) is often framed as an inevitable step of American expansion—but it was never a foregone conclusion. By pairing the intimate and epic together in critical juxtaposition, Christen T. Sasaki reveals the unstable nature not just of the coup state but of the US empire itself. The...

Between the 1980s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, Asian Americans in Los Angeles moved toward becoming a racial majority in the communities of the East San Gabriel Valley. By the late 1990s, their "model minority" status resulted in greater influence in local culture, neighbourhood politics, and policies regarding the use of suburban space. In the "country living"...

A history of the United States' systematic expulsion of "undesirables" and immigrants, told through the lives of the passengers who travelled from around the world, only to be locked up and forced out aboard America's first deportation trains. The United States, celebrated as a nation of immigrants and the land of the free, has developed the most extensive system of...

Health as Property shows how responses to racism can be predatory, harmful, and dangerous to poor people of colour. Nic Ramos examines a Black-led academic medical centre known as King-Drew that was built in response to the 1965 Watts Uprising. Forged by the political willingness of white voters to experiment with anti-poverty programmes in poor neighbourhoods of colour, the health...

Health as Property shows how responses to racism can be predatory, harmful, and dangerous to poor people of colour. Nic Ramos examines a Black-led academic medical centre known as King-Drew that was built in response to the 1965 Watts Uprising. Forged by the political willingness of white voters to experiment with anti-poverty programmes in poor neighbourhoods of colour, the health...

The radical history of a dynamic, multiracial American neighbourhood. “When I think of the future of the United States, and the history that matters in this country, I often think of Boyle Heights.”—George J. Sánchez The vision for America’s cross-cultural future lies beyond the multicultural myth of the "great melting pot." That idea of diversity often imagined ethnically distinct urban...

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while...

What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement? From April to November 1975, the US military processed over 112,000 Vietnamese refugees on the unincorporated territory of Guam; from 1977 to 1979, the State of Israel granted asylum and citizenship to 366 non-Jewish Vietnamese refugees. Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi analyses these two cases to theorise...

Reckoning with the current state of ethnic studies. Ethnic Studies at the Crossroads by George Lipsitz explores a field that is more visible than ever. Originally a project at the margins of academic and public life, ethnic studies has now achieved significant prominence and impact. However, it faces threats from well-funded political and legal campaigns against critical affirmative action, critical...