As the fastest growing group in the United States, Asian Americans are helping to change America. But much of their long history has been forgotten. Drawing from her sweeping new book, award-winning author Erika Lee joins us to explore the rich and complicated histories of Asians in the United States, the state of Asian American history, and the practice and politics of writing immigration history today.

Erika Lee holds the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History at University of Minnesota, where she also serves as Director of the Immigration History Research Center. One of the leading scholars on Asian American immigration, her pathbreaking book, At Americaʻs Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943 (Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2003) received the 2004 Theodore Saoutos Prize from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, and the 2005 History Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. She is also co-author (with Judy Wu) of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (Oxford University Press, 2010). Her latest book, The Making of Asian America: A History (Simon & Schuster), is garnering national media attention.

Sponsors: Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies, Department of American Culture, and Department of History