Beth Lew-Williams: John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law скачать в хорошем качестве

Beth Lew-Williams: John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law

In this MOCA TALK, watch Beth Lew-Williams, Professor of History at Princeton University, discuss her new book, "John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law." Recorded on November 6, 2025. Prof. Lew-Williams uncovers the revelatory history of how everyday life for Chinese residents across the American West was shaped by thousands of state and local regulations enacted long before federal exclusion. Often recorded in official documents under generic names like “John Doe Chinaman,” Chinese immigrants and their families navigated a dense web of laws governing labor, education, health care, property, and family life. Learn how these rules were enforced not just by police but by teachers and neighbors, and how Chinese communities met these constraints with remarkable resourcefulness—from challenging discriminatory taxes in court to asserting their political rights. ▶ ABOUT THE BOOK "John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life under American Racial Law" (Harvard University Press, 2025) Legal discrimination against Chinese people in the United States began in 1852. Over the next seventy years, officials in California, Oregon, Washington, and other western states instituted more than five thousand laws that marginalized and controlled their Chinese residents. In this eye-opening account, Beth Lew-Williams describes a legal architecture redolent of Jim Crow but tailored specifically to Chinese residents. Drawing on dozens of archives, "John Doe Chinaman" reveals the depth of anti-Chinese discrimination beyond federal exclusion and tells the stories of those who refused to accept a conditional place in American life. ▶ ABOUT THE SPEAKER Beth Lew-Williams is Professor of History and Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of "The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America" (2018) and "John Doe Chinaman" (2025). She is a 2025 recipient of the Dan David Prize and has held fellowships from the NEH, Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. #MOCA #MuseumofChineseinAmerica #BethLewWilliams #AsianAmericanHistory #ChineseAmericanHistory #AmericanHistory #RacialLaw