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Organizer/Curator, Invisible Restraints: Life and Labor at Seabrook Farms.

This exhibition explores Seabrook Farms’ layered histories, focusing in particular on the relationship between captive labor and capitalism that defined the company’s employment practices and government-backed hiring strategies during the Second World War and its immediate aftermath.

In addition to the main exhibition, students also produced online essays that highlight Seabrook  Farms’ residents memories and oral histories. The “I Remember” section of the exhibit can be found here.

Students also curated visual essays, which can be found here.

Rutgers’ contributions to the Humanities Action Lab’s States of Incarceration exhibit can be found here.

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Organizer/Instructor, History Workshop: Immigration Case Files and Stories of Restriction and Deportation

During the Spring 2018 semester, the undergraduate History Workshop course analyzed original documents from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that pertain to immigration restriction and deportation during the early years of the twentieth century. Each student in the class was assigned an INS case file from the National Archives and Record Administration records in Washington, D.C. Known by their nickname, “the 56,000 series,” the Immigration Policy and Correspondence files document the interrogations, investigations, and appeal processes that determined whether an immigrant was eligible to enter or the United States or remain in the country following their initial landing. The exhibit sections correspond to the different categories for exclusion – such as “likely to become a public charge” – that applied to immigrants whose eligibility to enter was not covered by the Chinese exclusion laws, or, after 1917, policies that prohibited the permanent immigration of Asian immigrants altogether.

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Organizer/Curator, Curating Guantánamo.

For the travelling exhibition, Rutgers’ students curated the panels: “Shaping an Empire” and “GTMO’s Legal Black Hole.”

The exhibit was on display from February 18 through March 29, 2013 in the Douglass Library atrium. Jasmeet Bawa and Hajar Hasani served as exhibit docents and educators, offering tours of the exhibit to more than 500 students at Rutgers. On March 28 & 29, 2013, Rutgers hosted a conference with scholars, legal activists, and community members on Guantánamo and its histories, and the contemporary debates surrounding its continued uses. (The conference program can be found here.)

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During the spring 2011 semester, I curated Chinese Exclusion in New Jersey: Immigration Law in the Past and Present, a student exhibition examining how the passage and enforcement of Chinese Exclusion laws affected Chinese immigrants and Chinese American residents in New Jersey. The exhibit was on display in the Asian American Cultural Center, Rutgers University, Livingston Campus, May 3 – September 2, 2011.

It is now available online through the New Jersey Digital Highway, hosted by the Rutgers’ Special Collections and University Archives: http://njdigitalhighway.org/exhibits/chinese_exclusion/.

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“‘What is Emory?’ Questions about Work and Community.” Working with members of Emory’s staff, we conducted oral histories and completed a visual essay project documenting how campus workers think about their jobs in relationship to how Emory defines “community.” (Emory failed to preserve the exhibit when the University shut down the Transforming Community Project.)

Organizer/Curator, Picturing Race at Emory, a student exhibition documenting how race has been visualized and represented as part of Emory University’s history. Using photographs from the University’s Archives, this exhibit examined how race has been performed, captured, and depicted as part of Emory’s academic, social, and political history.  On display in Woodruff Library, Emory University, May 4 – June 30, 2010.

Panels from Picturing Race at Emory can be found here.

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Curator, “Living and Learning: Chinese Immigration, Restriction, and Community in Brooklyn, 1850 to Present,” a museum exhibition that used oral histories and archival sources to examine the history of Chinese immigration to Brooklyn. Conducted oral histories with members of the Brooklyn Chinese-American Association; developed a walking tour of Sunset Park in conjunction with the exhibit. On display at the Brooklyn Historical Society, May 8 – Oct. 18, 2009. (Press coverage and images of exhibition available upon request. For additional information on the exhibit, see: http://brooklynhistory.org/exhibitions/live_learn.html#start.)

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Co-curator, with Jeff Manuel, “Law and Order: The Career and Legacy of Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig,” a museum exhibition and multimedia presentation that explored the career and legacy of Minneapolis Mayor Charles Stenvig, an independent candidate and former police officer elected on a “law and order” platform in 1969.  On display in the Andersen Library Gallery at the University of Minnesota, March – May 2007.  (Press coverage and reviews of exhibition available upon request.)

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Co-Organizer, with Lisa Blee, “Dinkytown Histories: Multiple Stories, Multiple Meanings.” Student exhibitions from the fall 2006 “Public History” course, exploring the history of Minneapolis’s Dinkytown neighborhood. On display in Nolte Hall and the Weisman Art Museum, December 2006 – February 2007.

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Co-Organizer, with Kevin Murphy, “Community/University: Students Explore West Bank History.” Student exhibitions from the fall 2005 “Public History” course, exploring the history of Minneapolis’s West Bank/Cedar-Riverside neighborhoods. On display in the Andersen Library Gallery at the University of Minnesota, December 2005 – January 2006.