News and Announcements
CSER’s Mae Ngai was quoted in a recent article by CNN titled, “Trump’s new ‘Aliens’ website exploits UFO intrigue to demean immigrants.” Read the piece here!
CSER professor Elizabeth (Liz) OuYang was recently interviewed for a piece in the Columbia Political Review. Read the piece, titled “ICE Raids, from a Professor’s Perspective,” here!
CSER Prof. Lori Flores was recently awarded the third annual Nach Waxman Prize for Food & Drink Scholarship from Kitchen Arts & Letters for her book, Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers & Activism from World War II to COVID-19. Read the full announcement here!
CSER Professor Sayantani DasGupta’s new book, Theft of the Ruby Lotus, made #8 on The New York Times‘s Best Sellers list under the category “Children’s Middle Grade Hardcover!” See the full list here.
Professor Mae Ngai received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Association of Asian American Studies at annual conferences held in April.
On April 23 Professor Mae Ngai delivered the Allison Davis lecture at the University of Chicago, “Once we were somebodies: refugees, the human, and history.”
CSER Prof. Sayantani DasGupta was recently spotlighted in a Columbia Spectator article called “‘Stories are good medicine’: Sayantani DasGupta on narrative medicine and her upcoming novel, ‘Theft of the Ruby Lotus’” about her new book, Theft of the Ruby Lotus. Read it here!
CSER’s Sayantani DasGupta published a piece in Publishers Weekly titled, “Sayantani DasGupta on Museums and Mourning, Art and Immigrant Joy.” Read the full piece here!
Prof. Lori Flores was recently interviewed on two separate radio stations about the revelations concerning farmworker leader/icon Cesar Chavez’s abuse of women and children. Listen to the KCBS San Francisco segment here and the KCRW Los Angeles segment here.
CSER’s Mae Ngai published a piece in The Economist, “America is a nation of immigrants with a history of exclusion,” as part of its series America at 250. Read it here!
CSER Professor Lori Flores’s recent book Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19 (UNC Press, 2025) received an Honorable Mention from the Latin American Studies Association’s Howard F. Cline Book Prize in Mexican History! Read the announcement here.
Professor Mae Ngai has been recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the Association of Asian American Studies. View the announcement here!
CSER professor and accomplished journalist Ed Morales recently published a piece in The New York Times on the trombonist, singer, bandleader, composer and producer Willie Colón. Read it here!
CSER Writer-in-Residence was chosen as one of seven finalists for the inaugural Conjunctions Residency, Writers Helping Writers! Read the full announcement here.
CSER’s Mae Ngai was recently interviewed on Background Briefing abut immigration, on one year anniversary of the second Trump administration. Listen to it here.
CSER’s Mae Ngai was recently featured in a segment on Democracy Now! speaking about denaturalization and birthright citizenship. Watch it here!
Professor Mae Ngai was chosen as a Margaret Olivia Sage Scholar by the Russell Sage Foundation for 2026-2027. MOS scholars are nominated and selected by the foundation’s board of trustees on the basis of “outstanding career accomplishments.”
Professor Mae Ngai was named an honorary fellow of the American Society for Legal History, the highest honor the Society confers, which recognizes distinguished historians whose scholarship has shaped the broad discipline of legal history and influenced the work of others, at its annual meeting in Detroit in November 15.
CSER’s Shana Redmond received a Special Recognition Award from the ASCAP Foundation for the liner notes she authored for the Grammy-nominated album Paul Robeson–Voice of Freedom: His Complete Columbia, RCA, HMV, and Victor Recordings (Sony Classical, 2024)! The liner notes received the Paul Williams “Loved the Liner Notes” Award at the 56th annual ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards. Read the full announcement here.
CSER’s Encuent(r)os event featuring Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes was featured in a write-up in the Columbia Spectator! The event was organized by CSER prof. Angie Cruz on behalf of CSER, Aster(ix) Journal, and Casa Hispanica.
