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 what she calls “the underdocumented” in her current book projects. Her forthcoming book with W. W. Norton, The Other Immigrant Story: Rethinking Assimilation, examines Latino immigrants as a racialized group rather than as an ethnic group that will inevitably assimilate into American identity and belonging. With the support of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is also writing a history of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens through the eyes of its workers. The book asks: What happens when we view cultural institutions not only through the people whose names grace their buildings, but also through the labor of those who sustain them?
