Maddalena Marinari

Dr. Marinari joined the history department at Gustavus Adolphus College in the fall semester of 2015. She teaches a broad range of courses on twentieth-century U.S. history, immigration history, American identity, U.S. in the world, and world history. In the classroom, she seeks to empower students to look at U.S. history in a global perspective, think critically about who makes history, and grapple with how the past influences the present. She loves hearing from students so feel free to stop by and say hi! 

Dr. Marinari also has an active research agenda. She has published extensively on immigration restriction and immigrant mobilization, including articles published in the Journal of Policy History, Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era, Social Science History, and Journal of American Ethnic History. She is the author of Unwanted: Italian And Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965 and, along with Maria Cristina Garcia and Madeline Hsu, a co-editor of A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: U.S. Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965.  Finally, she is an active public intellectual, who regularly gives public talks and writes for media outlets like Public Radio International and MinnPost.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

2020       Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization Against Restrictive Immigration Laws (1882-1965). Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press

2019       Co-Editor with Maria Cristina Garcia and Madeline Hsu, A Nation of Immigrants Reconsidered: The U.S. in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press

Refereed Journal Articles

2016       “Divided and Conquered: Immigration Reform Advocates and the Passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act,” Journal of American Ethnic History 35: 3.

2014       “‘Americans Must Show Justice in Immigration Policies Too’: The Passage of the 1965 Immigration Act,” Journal of Policy History 26: 2 (April): 219-245.

Other publications

2019       “Migration and the Transformation of the U.S. Population,” in Mark Bradley, David Engerman, and Max Friedman, Cambridge History of America and the World, vol. 4, 1945-present (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago)

2019       Co-author with Julian Lim, “Laws for a Nation of Nativists and Immigrants,” “Nation of Immigrants” Forum, Modern American History2, issue 1 (March): 49-52

2018       “In the Name of America’s Future”: The Fraught Passage of the1952 Immigration and Nationality Act,” History Now, issue 52

2017       “‘In the name of God … and in the Interest of our Country:’” Cold War, Foreign Policy, and Italian Americans’ Mobilization against Immigration Restriction,” in Joseph Sciorra and Laura Ruberto, eds., New Italian Migrations to the United States, Vol. 1: Politics and History Since 1945 (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press): 59-79

Public History

2017-19  Consultant, “Teach Immigration History,” Co-Sponsored by the Center for Asian American Studies and the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin and the Immigration and Ethnic History Society

2019       Invited Speaker, International Affairs Family Conference Human Migration: Law, Policy, and Human Rights, Star Island, Isles of Shoals, NH

2017       Project organizer, #ImmigrationSyllabus, a collaboration between the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN

Courses Taught