Race, law and Chinese migrants in the American West topic of April 17 presentation

A Princeton University historian will discuss race, law, Chinese migrants and the American West of the 19th century in a presentation on Wednesday, April 17, as part of the programming during Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month at Cal State San Bernardino.

Beth Lew-Williams, professor of history at Princeton University and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer, will discuss her current book project, “John Doe Chinaman: Race and Law in the American West,” which examines the policing of Chinese migrants in California during the 19th century.

The presentation will take place beginning at noon on Zoom. It is open to the public. Jasmine Lee, CSUSB associate professor of English, will facilitate a question-and-answer session.

Lew-Williams is also the author of “The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the making of the Alien in America,” a work that is the recipient of several awards: the Ray Allen Billington Prize, the Ellis W. Hawley Prize, the Sally and Ken Owens Award, the Vincent P. DeSantis Book Prize, and the Caroline Bancroft History Prize.

Her article, “‘Chinamen’ and ‘Delinquent Girls’: Intimacy, Exclusion, and a Search for California’s Color Line,” published in the Journal of American History (December 2017), won the Western History Association's Ray Allen Billington Prize, the Jensen-Miller Award, and the Vicki L. Ruiz Award.

A historian of race and migration in the United States, specializing in Asian American history, Lew-Williams earned her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and her doctorate degree in history from Stanford University. She has held fellowships from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

The April 17 program is co-sponsored by the CSUSB College of Arts and Letters, the Santos Manuel Student Union, and the APIDA Heritage Month Planning Committee, along with support from the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program.