Natalia Molina

How the history of race, citizenship and immigration shapes our lives today
  • Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity
  • USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Expertise

  • Latinx
  • Chicanx
  • U.S. immigration
  • Coronavirus/COVID-19 and race/ethnicity

Additional Information

Professor Molina’s work sits at the intersections of race, culture, immigration, and citizenship with the goal of helping us understand everyday issues in the world today. She is the author of two award-winning books, How Race Is Made in America and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940.

She continues to explore the themes of race, space, labor, immigration, gender and urban history in her book in progress, Place-makers, which tells the story of the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park in the 1950s and 1960s, and the immigrant place-makers who made it a vital institution for its workers and customers alike.

Professor Molina is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.