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 is currently working on a book manuscript on the mobilization against restrictive immigration laws from 1882 to 1965. She has presented her research widely at national conferences and her project has received funding from numerous national organizations. In collaboration with Maria Cristina Garcia (Cornell University) and Madeline Hsu (University of Texas, Austin), she is editing an anthology on the impact of restrictive immigration laws on the United States from 1924 to 1965. Finally, she is an active public intellectual, serves on the board of the Immigration Ethnic History Society, and is a member of the Affiliated Scholars Program at the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

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): page numbers

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

2017       Author, “Another Time in History that the U.S. Created Travel Bans—Against Italians,” Public Radio International (PRI)

2017       Consultant, “Nation of Immigrants Teaching Project,” 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

2017       Contributor, “We’ve Been Here Before: Historians Annotate and Analyze Immigration Ban's Place in History,” Public Radio International (PRI)

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

2017       “Bringing History to Life in Minnesota,” History Unfolded Blog, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

Courses Taught