This program is brought to you by MOCA friends and partners, including Bloomberg Philanthropies.
This program is also supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.
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MOCA TALKS: Mae Ngai in conversation with Beth Lew-Williams
March 2, 2022, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Purchase The Chinese Question At Your Local Bookstore
In celebration of VIRTUAL MOCA FEST 2022, historian Mae Ngai discusses her latest book The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W.W. Norton and Company, 2021) with Beth Lew-Williams, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University. The Chinese Question narrates a complex history of the economic, social, and cultural circumstances around the mid-19th century gold rushes in America, South Africa, and Australia, and their impact on the Chinese diaspora. Professor Ngai and Lew-Williams discuss this history and its relevance to current times.
We look forward to your participation, and to sharing this and many more exemplary stories of the Chinese in America.
About the Speakers
Mae M. Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, and Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race. She is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in the histories of immigration, citizenship, nationalism, and the Chinese diaspora. She is author of the award winning Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004); The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010); and The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, the Nation, and Dissent. Before becoming a historian she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. She is now writing Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of an Idea (under contract with Princeton University Press).
Beth Lew-Williams is Associate Professor of History at Princeton University. She is a historian of race and migration in the United States, specializing in Asian American history. Her book, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), won the Ray Allen Billington Prize and the Ellis W. Halley Prize from the Organization of American Historians. With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, her next book project, John Doe Chinaman, will consider the policing of Chinese migrants in the American West.
MOCA has not skipped a beat since its temporary closure in March 2020. We’ve been creating new digital content through multiple platforms, always free of charge—because history matters. We are facing tremendous financial losses due to COVID-19. We hope you’ll consider making a gift to become part of a continuing lifeline for MOCA. No amount is too little and we greatly appreciate your generosity. Your contribution helps sustain our beloved institution and supports the creation of new, online programming that will bring comfort and inspiration to more communities.