The Center for Diversity & Democracy

Featured Alumni: Daniel HoSang: American Studies' Daniel HoSang is USC College's featured alumni for April. The website will remain on this page until the end of April. Afterwards, Daniel's profile will be available in the American Studies and Ethnicity website.

Tracing the Roots of Discrimination: María Elena Martínez's new book - analyzing the way in which the Spanish purity of blood concept shaped patriotic and racial ideologies in colonial Mexico - wins top awards from the American Historical Association.

After Ellis Island: Headquartered in USC College, American Quarterly's journal on migration has won the Council of Editors of Learned Journals 2009 Award for Best Special Issue.

Appending the Rules of (Civic) Engagement: USC College's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity faculty and students examine racial issues through work in the community. Lady Bird Johnson said the clash of ideas is the sound of freedom. For USC College's Department of American Studies and Ethnicity (ASE), diverse ideas are also the gateway to research and scholarship that can create societal change.

The Bridge Builder: George Sanchez, professor of Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, and History, was appointed USC College's diversity director in 2008. On a fall Saturday morning, parents pushed strollers along the Mexican marketplace on Olvera Street, cheerful despite an incessant drizzle. Near the birthplace of Los Angeles, a small group of scholars and community members huddled inside a brick landmark in El Pueblo de Los Angeles. A surviving structure from Old Chinatown, it is where prominent Chinese businessman Quon How Shing taught new immigrants English and how to integrate into American society.

American Quarterly Celebrates 60 Anniversary: On Friday, March 6, American Quarterly editor Curtis Marez, associate professor in the USC School of Cinematic Arts, hosted a reception and roundtable discussion to mark the 60th anniversary of the journal. The publication's editors and board members as well as former ASA presidents discussed the journal's many highlights and its development during the past six decades, including the changes since its move from Georgetown University to its current home at USC.

So You Want to be a Professor: Ambitious USC College graduate students move ahead of the competition. At USC College, doctoral students seeking careers in the academe learn to become professionals long before they begin searching for work.

Laura Pulido, activist scholar and Professor at the University of Southern California in the Departments of Geography and American Studies & Ethnicity, shares her thoughts with AK Press about the best books on Los Angeles from a radical perspective. Pulido authored the very excellent Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical activism in Los Angeles and co-authored the forthcoming A Guide to the People's History of LA .

Crossing the Line: Mainstream media have impeded effective policy making on immigration, say panelists at Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration seminar. Focusing almost exclusively on dramatic, episodic events like the Elián González saga and other illegality issues, mainstream media have distorted the story of immigration in America, panelists said during a recent seminar.

USC Scholar Conducts Largest U.S. Survey of Asian American Voters: Results indicate potential impact for Prop. 8 and presidential election. A new report by political scientist Janelle Wong of USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences reveals that a majority of Asian American likely voters oppose a constitutional amendment that would define "marriage as between a man and a woman, thus barring marriage between gay and lesbian couples."

Ruth Wilson Gilmore receives Prestigious Book Award. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, associate professor of American studies & Ethnicity and of Geography in USC College, has been awarded the Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize for the best first book in American studies that highlights the intersections of race with gender, class, sexuality and/or nation. Her book titled Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (University of California Press) was published in 2007.

USC Welcomes new Trojans: "Don't limit yourself by preconceived notions of what is practical," Dean Howard Gillman advises newcomers. Welcoming USC College's newest undergrads, Dean Howard Gillman encouraged students to approach this milestone in their lives with "a spirit of exploration."

George Sanchez has been appointed Director of College Diversity. The newly created position is designed to coordinate the College's efforts to increase diversity among faculty and students, by working with academic departments to ensure that recruitment is guided by emerging best practices. Sanchez will also work with national organizations and foundations to develop special programs for diversity. He will also continue to serve as Director of the USC Center for Diversity and Democracy.

Ricardo Ramírez, a young political scientist, breaks ground studying the immigrant vote. While many scholars are investigating the intersection of politics and ethnicity, Ramírez's research is breaking new ground. A collection of essays he co-edited called Transforming Politics, Transforming America: The Political and Civic Incorporation of Immigrants in the United States, was the first book to analyze immigrant political incorporation - the impact that the foreign-born population in the United States has on American politics, and vice versa.

The Center for Study of Immigrant Integration aims to facilitate civic dialogue about the intersecting issues of immigrant settlement, economic mobility, social cohesion and social equity. Rather than focusing only on new arrivals, the center will promote research and dialogue concerning long-term issues of immigrant settlement, generational succession, incorporation and integration. Manuel Pastor, professor of Geography and American Studies & Ethnicity, and Dowell Myers, professor of urban planning and demography in SPPD and Sociology, will act as co-directors.

Daniel Hosang, among the first graduates of USC College's American Studies & Ethnicity Ph.D. program, earned the Gabriel Prize for his dissertation examining California's "racialized" ballot propositions. His 357-page dissertation looks at how California turned back the clock on progress in the fight against racial discrimination.