Problematizing the linear approach to immigrant integration and assimilation, this lecture will explore the dynamic processes of identity negotiations among immigrants and their descendants during the period between the 1890s and 1930s. In a time of intensifying fears around newcomers and their negative impact on American identity and culture, immigrants endured prejudice and discrimination, voluntarily and involuntarily engaging in the Americanization process. Through a comparative perspective, this lecture will focus on Armenian immigrants and the institutions they founded in America to demonstrate how in the processes of negotiating race, language, religion and belongings, they produced distinct forms of Americanness and Armenianness. Complicating the concepts of ethnicity and nation, this lecture will bring to bear the lived collective experiences and voices of immigrants to highlight alternative spaces of belonging that move beyond idealized identities.