Participant Info

First Name
Llana
Last Name
Barber
Affiliation
State Univesity of New York College at Old Westbury
Website URL
Keywords
Immigration history; Urban history; Latinx history; Caribbean migration; Dominican migration; Haitian migration; Late 20th-century US history; American empire
Additional Contact Information

Personal Info

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About Me

Llana Barber is associate professor of American Studies at the State University of New York at Old Westbury where she teaches immigration, urban, and Latinx history, as well as the history of US imperialism. Her first book, Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 (UNC Press, 2017), explored the history of New England’s first Latinx-majority city. This work emphasized the impact of deindustrialization and suburbanization on Lawrence, and the Puerto Rican and Dominican activism that transformed the city. Latino City received the 2017 Kenneth Jackson Award from the Urban History Association and the 2018 Lois P. Rudnick Prize from the New England American Studies Association.

Barber is currently researching the history of the Haitian diaspora from the 1970s to 1990s, focusing on U.S., Dominican, and Bahamian efforts to exclude Haitian asylum seekers in this era. The title of this book-length work-in-progress is “No Refuge from Empire: Haitian Migration, Militarized Exclusion, and the Formation of the Nativist State.” She received a Franklin Research Grant from the American Philosophical Society to conduct research for this project.

She recently published an article, “Anti-Black Racism and the Nativist State” in the Journal of American  Ethnic History tracing the role of anti-Blackness in the history of US immigration restriction from the colonial era to the present.

Recent Publications

Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 (University of North Carolina Press, 2017)

Anti-Black Racism and the Nativist State” (Journal of American Ethnic History, 2023)

Media Coverage
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
Caribbean, North America
Expertise by Chronology
Expertise by Topic
Migration & Immigration, Race, Urban History