This May’s Lunchbox Lecture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln history doctorate student Brianna Rose DeValk offers a compelling talk, “Beyond Vows: Race, Marriage, and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Omaha,” at the Nebraska History Museum on May 20th from 12 PM to 1 PM. She addresses the plight of early 20th-century American-born women who lost their citizenship when they married immigrant men under the Expatriation Act of 1907.
Featured in the Spring 2025 Nebraska History Magazine, DeValk will share Anna Napravnik Ishii’s story of her American citizenship being stripped away (not once but twice) after marrying unnaturalized immigrants, Bohemian immigrant Peter Napravnik and Japanese immigrant James Ishii, after Napravnik’s death. Delivering the presentation at the 2024 Northern Great Plains History Conference, DeValk earned positive feedback from her peers.
Event admission is free. LNKTV will record the lecture and make it available to the public.
Special thanks to the Nebraska State Historical Society Foundation for providing funding for the recording of this event and airing to follow by LNKTV.
About Brianna Rose DeValk
DeValk is a Ph.D. student in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she specializes in the North American West, Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Digital Humanities. Her current research investigates the lives of American-born women whose citizenship was taken upon marriage to unnaturalized immigrants throughout the early twentieth century. While limited to women of the Northern Great Plains, the identities and stories of such women and their loss of American citizenship can be found in her ongoing and unreleased database project, Citizenship Taken.
