UPCOMING EVENTS

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Brianna Nofil, College of William and Mary, “Mass Deportation and the Making of the Jail Bed Economy,” October 9, 2024, 5:00pm

Brianna Nofil is a historian of the modern United States, with a focus on migration, incarceration, and law. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2020. Her first book, The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration, will be published by Princeton University Press in Fall 2024. The Migrant’s Jail demonstrates how a century of political, economic, and ideological exchange between the immigration bureaucracy and the criminal justice system gave rise to the U.S.’ vast immigration detention system, and how an evolving network of individuals, municipalities, and private corporations profited from jailing.
Co-sponsored by American Studies, the Center for Prison Education, the Fries Center for Global Studies, Latin American Studies, College of Social Studies, Sociology, and History.

Academic Open House, November 19, 2024, 11:50am-1:10pm

Curious about the American Studies major? Join us for pizza and conversation with faculty and current majors.

Annual Slotkin Lecture in American Studies: Neil Foley, “Whose History: Monuments, Memory, and the Contested Pasts of the West and South,” March 28, 11:50am-1:10pm, lunch provided.

This lecture examines how Indigenous and Mexican Americans in the West organized to remove statues and memorials to Spanish conquistadors, white settlers, and missionaries in New Mexico, California, and Texas, while the South engaged in cultural battles over the removal of statues of Civil War generals and politicians.