Ana Raquel Minian is an Associate Professor of History at Stanford University, teaching Latinx history, immigration, the history of incarceration and detention, and modern Mexican history.

Published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, Minian’s first book, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Immigration, discusses how unauthorized immigration from Mexico became prevalent between 1965 and 1986. During this period, Mexican politicians began encouraging migration as a way of easing the country’s economic woes, while in the U.S., migrants were classified as “illegal aliens.” The responses of migrant families resulted in the establishment of a cycle of undocumented migration. Undocumented Lives won five awards from major academic associations, including the David Montgomery Award for the best book in labor and working class history and the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s Theodore Saloutos Book Award.

In 2017, the Journal of American History published Minian’s article “De Terruño a Terruño: Re-imagining Belonging through the Creation of Hometown Associations,” which examines the clubs formed by migrants in Los Angeles between the 1960s-1980s that sent monetary aid to their home communities in Mexico. Minian also published an article entitled “Indiscriminate and Shameless Sex: The Strategic Use of Sexuality by the United Farm Workers” in the American Quarterly in 2013.

Earlier this year, Minian became one of the twenty-seven recipients of the prestigious Carnegie Fellowship, a research award that they will use to complete their next project, No Man’s Lands: A New History of Immigration Restriction. The book will analyze how during the late Cold War, U.S. government officials created new territories designed to impede immigration from Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, as well as the effects of this practice on both migrants and citizens.

Written by Ericka Familia, Class of 2021

A. Naomi Paik is a historian and educator, with scholarship concentrating in Asian American studies and Gender and Women’s studies. Currently, Paik is an associate professor of Asian American studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she has taught courses such as “Immigration, Law, and Rights,” “Race, Memory, and Violence,” and “Prisons, Race, and Terror.” In addition, Paik is involved in building the legal humanities at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as the IPRH-Mellon fellow in Legal Humanities.

Paik is the author of the 2016 book Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Camps since World War II, which won the Asian American Studies Award for Best Book in History, and was also a finalist for the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize from the American Studies Association in 2017. Rightlessness explores the United States’ history of imprisonment and mistreatment of foreigners and refugees—including the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II—and the need for abolishing current perspectives on sanctuary.

Paik is also the author of Bans, Walls, Raids, Sanctuary: Understanding U.S. Immigration for the 21^st Century, published in May 2020 by the University of California Press. This book analyzes the United States’ treatment of noncitizens and how xenophobia is woven into the country’s foundation.

A board member of the Radical History Review, Paik has edited several issues of the journal, including “Radical Histories of Sanctuary” in 2019, and “Policing, Justice, and the Radical Imagination” in 2020. She has also published articles in a variety of publications.

Paik is currently working on a new book manuscript on the meaning of “sanctuary of all," and developing another on military outsourcing.

Written by Sogona Cisse, Class of 2021