Who decides the rights of immigrants? Historian Brendan A. Shanahan joins us at the Nebraska History Museum on Tuesday, June 9, at 6 pm to discuss his award-winning book Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States, 1865–1965 (Oxford University Press, 2025).
While federal law governed who could enter the country, Shanahan reveals that battles over what rights immigrants actually held—to vote, to work in public jobs, to obtain professional licenses, etc.—were fought state by state for nearly a century. The result was a patchwork of citizenship rights that varied dramatically across the country, with consequences that still echo today.
This event is free and open to the public thanks to the support of the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation. This lecture is the first presentation during the museum’s summer History Unveiled program series, each month from June to August.
About Brendan A. Shanahan
Shanahan teaches U.S. and Canadian political and legal history at Yale University. An immigration historian, his first book, Disparate Regimes: Nativist Politics, Alienage Law, and Citizenship Rights in the United States, 1865-1965, came out in 2025 with Oxford University Press. His scholarly and public history works have appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, Law and History Review, the American Review of Canadian Studies, and TIME Magazine’s “Made by History” section, among other publications.
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