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George E. Pozzetta Dissertation Award

The IEHS presents two awards of $1,000 each to help graduate students with their dissertations on U.S.  immigration, emigration, or ethnic history, broadly defined. These awards are intended for graduate students in the process of researching and writing their dissertations, and not for students completing and defending in 2024. For the 2024 award, the committee invites applications from any Ph.D. candidate who will have completed qualifying exams by 2023.

Applicants will submit the following materials to pozzetta_award@iehs.org, which will reach all committee members:

  1. A 1500-word descriptive proposal in English discussing the significance of the work, the methodology, sources, and collections to be consulted.
  2. A proposed budget.
  3. A brief curriculum vitae.

In addition, applicants will arrange for their major advisor to submit a supporting letter to pozzetta_award@iehs.org

Application materials and the supporting letter must be received by the submission deadline: December 31, 2023.

Committee Members

Katherine Carper (Chair), Hardeep Dhillon, Jessica Ordaz

Previous Recipients

2023

Jian Gao (University of Texas at Austin).

Kimberly White (University of Pennsylvania).

2022

Kimberly Phuong Beaudreau (University of Illinois at Chicago): “Economic Migrants and the Decline of the American Refugee and Asylum System, 1975-2000.”

Connie Thomas (Queen Mary University of London): “Regional Identity and the Foundations of US Migration Policy in the Early American Republic, 1776-1804.”

2021

Lauren Catterson (University of Toronto): “Disreputable Conduct: Misfeasance, Malfeasance, and the US Immigration Service, 1903 to 1940.”

Jonathan Cortez (Brown University): “The Age of Encampment: Race, Surveillance, and the Power of Spatial Scripts, 1933-1950.”

2020

Karma Palzom (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Political Transformations in the Tibetan Freedom Movement: Resettlement and Political Activism in the United States.”

Kyle Pruitt (University of Maryland), “Possessing a Nation: Labor, Race, and the Invention of a Gatekeeping Economy, 1882-1924.”

2019

Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez (Columbia University), “Migrants in the Making: Invisible Agricultural Child Labor and the Limits of Citizenship in the Twentieth Century.”

Miles Culpepper (University of California, Berkeley), “Guatemalan Exiles in Cold War North America, 1954-1996”

2018

Philip D. Erenrich (Syracuse University), The Assumption of Identity: the Exclusion and Deportation of ‘Gypsy’ Immigrants from the US, 1891-1932”

Yukako Otori (Harvard University), “Disposable Subjects: Child Migration, International Law, and U.S. Immigration Policy, 1882-1929”

2017

Eladio Bobadilla (Duke University), “One People without Borders”: The Lost Roots of the Immigrants’ Rights Movement, 1954-1994”

Katherine Carper (Boston College), “The Business of Migration, 1830-1880”

2016

Stephanie Fairchild (University of California, San Diego), “Every Generation Has to Win it Again: Understanding SEIU’s Justice for Janitors Campaign in the Continuum of Radical Struggle for Justice and Dignity”

Jessica Ordaz (University of California, Davis), “Making Invisible Carceral Spaces Visible: Migration, State Violence, and Activism at the El Centro Immigration Detention Center, 1947-2014”

2015

Suraya Kahn (Rice University), “Finding Palestine in America: The Impact of the Arab-Israeli Conflict on Arab-American Identity”

Laura Gutierrez (University of California, San Diego), “Repatriation and Revolutionary Promise: Migration, US-Mexico Relations and Transnational Citizenship, 1920-1964″

2014

Barry McCarron, (Georgetown University), “The Global Irish and Chinese: Migration, Exclusion, and Foreign Relations Among Empires”

Cecilia Márquez, (University of Virginia), “Southern Transformations: Latino/as, African Americans and the Making of the U.S. South, 1945-1970″

2013

Mayra Avita (University of California San Diego), “Political Comadrazgo: Chicana Networks, Gender Politics, and Ethinic Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles”

Kristina Poznan (College of William and Mary), “Becoming Immigrant Nation Builders; The Advancement of Austria-Hungary’s National Projects in the United States, 1880s-1920s”

2012

Adam Goodman (University of Pennsylvania), “Mexican Migration and the Rise of the Deportation Regime, 1942-2010″

2011

Marieke Polfliet (University of Nice Sophia Antopolis, France), “Emigration and Politicization: French Migrants in New York and New Orleans in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century (1803-1860)”

2010

Jared Toney (University of Toronto), “Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Migration and the Transnational Dialectics of Community in North America, 1910-1929″

2009

Hidetaka Hirota (Boston College), “‘To any place beyond sea where he belongs’: Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1848-1877”

2008

Danielle Battisti (SUNY, Buffalo), “Manipulating Immigration Restriction in Postwar America: Italian Americans and Italian Immigration, 1945-1965″

2007

Rachel Kranson (New York University), “Grappling with the Good Life: Anxieties of Jewish Affluence and Consumption in Postwar America, 1945-1967″

2006

Arissa H. Oh (University of Chicago), “Into the Arms of America: Adoption from Korea, 1950-1969″

2005

David J. LaVigne (University of Minnesota), “Black Mesabi: Race, Ethnicity and Nation on the Mesabi Iron Range”

John W. Weber III, (College of William and Mary), “The Shadow of the Revolution: South Texas, the Mexican American Working Class”

2004

Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho (University of Texas, El Paso), “Mexicans and Chinese in the Formation of Gender, Race and Nation in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands, 1910-1940″

2003

Vadim Koukouchkine (Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario), “Peasants on the Move: Slavic Labour Migration from the Russian Empire to Canada”

2002

Jennifer Guglielmo (University of Minnesota), “Negotiating Gender, Race, and Coalition: Italian Women and Working-Class Politics in New York City, 1880-1914″

2001

Anna Pegler-Gorden (University of Michigan), “In Sight of America: Photography and U.S. Immigration Policy, 1880-1930″

2000

Daniel A. Gebler (University of Southern California), “Redefining Jewish Space in Los Angeles: Negotiating Identity in a Twentieth Century American Metropolis”

1999

Serena Ruth Zabin (Rutgers University), “Places of Exchange: Race, Gender and New York City, 1700-1765″

1998

Richard Sukjoo Kim (University of Michigan) “The Dialecttics of Nationalism and Ethnicity: Korean Immigration to the United States and Transnational Politics, 1882-1945″

1997

Nancy C. Carnevale (Rutgers University), “Living in Translation: Language and Italian Immigrants in the U.S., 1900-1968″

1996

Russell Kazal (University of Pennsylvania), “Becoming Old Stock: Religion and the Waning of German-American Identity in Philadelphia, 1900-1930″