{"id":5824,"date":"2025-09-26T15:38:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ase\/?p=5824"},"modified":"2025-09-26T15:38:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T22:38:24","slug":"natalia-molina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ase\/2025\/09\/26\/natalia-molina\/","title":{"rendered":"Natalia Molina"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n  \n    \n\n\n\n\n\n\n<div\n  class=\"cc--component-container cc--rich-text \"\n\n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  >\n  <div class=\"c--component c--rich-text\"\n    \n      >\n\n    \n      \n<div class=\"f--field f--wysiwyg\">\n\n    \n  <p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>As a Dist<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-2250 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ase\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/68\/2023\/02\/Faculty-Spotlight.jpeg\" alt=\"USC Historian Natalia Molina posing inn between sliding glass doors with a reflection of plants in the glass\" width=\"306\" height=\"368\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ase\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/68\/2023\/02\/Faculty-Spotlight.jpeg 491w, https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/ase\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/68\/2023\/02\/Faculty-Spotlight-249x300.jpeg 249w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 306px) 100vw, 306px\" \/>inguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, as well as Dean\u2019s Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, Natalia Molina is one of the most celebrated faculty members of the ASE Department.\u00a0 Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship.\u00a0 Dr. Molina is the author of three award-winning books:\u00a0 <em>Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles <\/em>(2006); <em>How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts <\/em>(2014); and most recently, <em>A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community <\/em>(2022), which also was a finalist for the James Beard Award.\u00a0 This book chronicles the lives of immigrant workers, including Molina\u2019s grandmother, who became placemakers, nurturing and feeding their communities at restaurants that served as urban anchors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 In 2020, Natalia Molina was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, becoming the second ASE faculty member (the first was Dr. Viet Nguyen) so honored.\u00a0 Molina will become the President of the Organization of American Historians in 2028, the largest scholarly organization focused on U.S. history with over 6,000 members.\u00a0 She has also served as a councilmember of the Library of Congress, on the advisory board of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, and as the W.M. Keck Interim Director of Research at the Huntington Library.\u00a0 Having won numerous teaching awards and the USC Faculty Mentoring Award for Mentoring Graduate Students in 2023-24, Molina also regularly writes for the wider public, being published by the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em>, the <em>Washington Post<\/em>, and the <em>San Diego Union-Tribune<\/em>.\u00a0 Professor Molina is currently working on a new book, <em>The Silent Hands that Shaped the Huntington Library: A History of Its Immigrant Workers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n  <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - 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