Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor and Dean’s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the President-Elect of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the largest scholarly organization focused on U.S. history with over 6,000 members. Her influential research examines the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. An award-winning author, teacher, and mentor, she has written three acclaimed books: How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts; Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940; and, most recently, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community. The Los Angeles Times called A Place at the Nayarit an “essential Los Angeles book.” It was a finalist for a James Beard Award and received 14 awards and honorable mentions from various organizations. The book chronicles the lives of immigrant workers, including Molina’s grandmother, who became placemakers, nurturing and feeding their communities at restaurants that served as urban anchors.
Professor Molina continues telling the stories of underrepresented groups in her books in progress. Her forthcoming book The Other Immigrant Story: Rethinking Assimilation looks at Latino immigrants as a racialized group, not as an ethnic group that will invariably assimilate into American identity and belonging. Today, as citizens are being arrested and deported regardless of how many generations their families have been in the U.S., the issue is critical. A second book currently in development with the support of a Guggenheim fellowship explores the history of The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens through the eyes of its workers. The book asks what if we look at cultural institutions not just through the people whose names grace the buildings?
