FLAGSTAFF — NAU Latin American Students will present “History In the Headlines: Climate Migration” at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14 at NAU, Liberal Arts 120.
This History in the Headlines Event features Dr. Maria Cristina Garcia, Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
Dr. Garcia’s talk will address the relationship between climate change and migration patterns, especially as these issues pertain to those traveling from Central America and the Caribbean to the U.S. Garcia will highlight case studies from Central America and the Caribbean to demonstrate the misconceptions and failures of US immigration policy and the changes that must be made in order to address the human devastation caused by climate change paired with environmental and political catastrophe.
Garcia, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, writes and teaches about refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers. Her most recent book is State of Disaster: The Failure of U.S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), which was awarded an Honorable Mention from the Theodore Saloutos Book Prize committee of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
She is the author of three other books: The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America (Oxford University Press, 2017), a study of the actors and interests that have shaped US refugee policy in the Post-Cold War and post 9/11 era; Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada (University of California Press, 2006), a study of the individuals, groups, and organizations that responded to the Central American refugee crisis of the 1980s and 1990s, and helped shape refugee policies throughout North America; and Havana USA: Cuban Exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida (University of California Press, 1996), examined the migration of Cubans to the United States after the Castro revolution and how these Cold war migrants-became a powerful economic and political presence in the United States, influencing foreign policy and electoral outcomes, reshaping the cultural landscape of the South, and ultimately reinterpreting what it means to assimilate.
In addition to the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, Garcia is an elected member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. She is one of the two inaugural recipients of the President’s and Provost’s Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service in Diversity. She is also the recipient of Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award and the Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award.
Garcia serves on the History Advisory Committee of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and has served as a consultant on various television programs.
Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Conversation, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel, and Quartz. She has been interviewed on National Public Radio, C-Span, and Bloomberg Radio.
Contact:
Jamie Paul
9288143378
jamie.paul@nau.edu