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. She is the co-editor with Erika Lee of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of American History on the hundredth anniversaries of the passage of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 and co-editor with Maria Cristina Garcia of a second anthology, titled Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980 under contract with the University of Illinois Press. The Gustavus faculty recognized her outstanding scholarly record with the 2021 Faculty Scholarly Accomplishment Award, the college's highest honor for research. 

She is also an active public intellectual. She regularly gives public talks and has written for media outlets like the Washington Post, Public Radio International, and MinnPost. She is one of the scholars who created the #ImmigrationSyllabus, an online tool for anyone interested in understanding the history behind current debates on immigration, and Immigrants in COVID America, a curated collection of resources that chronicles the impact of the pandemic on migrant and refugee communities in the United States. Her research for this project received funding from the Social Science Research Council. Lastly, she is the president elect of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society. In recognition of her public engagement, the Minnesota Campus Compact awarded her the Presidents’ Civic Engagement Leadership Award in the spring of 2021.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

2022       Co-editor with Maria Cristina García, Whose America? U.S. Immigration Policy since 1980. University of Illinois Press

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.

Special Journal Issues

2022       Guest-editor with Erika Lee, “The Immigration Act of 1924: Antecedents, Impacts, and Legacies,” special issue, Journal of American History (June)

2014       Author, “From Subjects to Actors: Italians and Jews and the Fight against Immigration Restriction in the United States,” part of a special issue on “The Intergenerational Legacies of Louise Tilly’s Work,” Social Science History 38: 1 (Spring): 89-95

2012       Author, “‘An Acrid Odor of the 1920s is Again in the Air’: The Strange Career of American Nativism and What John Higham’s Strangers in the Land Can Still Help Us Uncover Today,” part of a special issue on John Higham’s Strangers in the Land, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 11, no. 2 (April): 258-262

Recent Public History Involvement

2021       Interview with Chienyn Chi, Not From Here, IEHS Online

2021       Guest with Dr. Erika Lee, COVID-Calls, Podcast with Dr. Scott Knowles

2020       Q&A with Rebecca Onion, “Fact-Checking Fargo: How Bad Was Anti-Italian Racism in the 1950s?,” Slate

Courses Taught