Mae Ngai

Mae M. Ngai is Professor of History and Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies at Columbia University. She is a U.S. legal and political historian interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism. Her works include Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, which won six awards, including the Frederick Jackson Turner prize from the OAH and the Littleton Griswold prize from the AHA; The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America; Major Problems in American Immigration History; and The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics. 

She has held fellowships from NYU Law School, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Institute for Advanced Study, Library of Congress, NY Public Library, Davis Center (Princeton), and Russell Sage Foundation, among others. Ngai writes on immigration history and policy matters for the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Dissent. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.