State Library of NSW, Monday 11 December 2023
This conference brings scholars of different migrant communities together to explore the twentieth century period of mass migration. Migrants were embedded in commercial, family and information networks that connected original homelands and new places, often moving between them to maintain old ties and create new opportunities. At the same time, diasporic communities were often marginalised in the polities and economies of their new homelands, and often created their own cultural and economic spaces even as they were made a target of, or contributed to, racial anxiety by white settler populations. AHA members Sophie Loy-Wilson, Victoria Haskins, Joy Damousi, Andonis Piperoglou, Ebony Nilsson, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Ruth Balint, Claire Lowrie, Eureka Henrich, and Alexandra Dellios. The organisers also welcome renowned American visitors of Jewish transatlantic migration histories to share their insights and broaden our own understandings of the ways in which migration has shaped settler societies: Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History, Columbia University, in conversation with Rebecca Kobrin, Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University.