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Mitchell Center JMC Postdoc Evan Taparata's Dissertation Recognized by Immigration and Ethnic History Society

Monday, May 6, 2019 - 3:45pm

Each year, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society makes an annual award for an outstanding dissertation in the field of immigration and ethnic history. Evan's dissertation, Evan Taparata,”No Asylum for Mankind: The Creation of Refugee Law and Policy in the United States, 1776-1951," received the 2019 Honorable Mention for Outstanding Dissertation. See the full list of past and current recipients here. This is not Evan's first honor for his dissertation project: in 2016, Evan's dissertation proposal won the inaugural OAH John Higham Research Fellowship.

Ending when most histories of refugee law begin, Taparata’s study unveils a wider world of refugee regulation in the United States that dates back to America’s founding era. Thomas Paine famously wrote in his 1776 political pamphlet Common Sense that America ought to be an “asylum for mankind.” Taparata argues that America’s earliest examples of refugee regulation were not motivated by a sense of humanitarian obligation, but were entangled with the dispossession of Native people, the marginalization of African Americans before and after emancipation, and the exclusion of so-called “undesirable” immigrants.