Speaker Series: katrina quisumbing king

In 1898 the United States became a formal overseas empire and claimed sovereignty over the Philippine islands, justifying its rule in explicitly racial terms. Less than fifty years later, in 1946, Philippine independence was recognized by the United States, even as it continued to exert influence over the domestic and foreign affairs of the newly decolonized Republic. Despite some differences, U.S. control remained racial and imperial. In this talk, I show how U.S. federal state actors translated their ideas of race into state structures. Through innovating constitutional law, bureaucratic administration, and legislation, state actors built a durable and flexible system of racial-imperial rule that not only lasted beyond the period of formal empire but continues to this day. I trace debates among U.S.  presidents, federal legislators, administrators, and court justices about what kind of state the United States should be, the place of nonwhite people in the polity, and the best way to maintain U.S. white hegemony. in charting how state actors’ positions—some nativist, isolationist, and protectionist and others expansionist, interventionist, and imperialist—evolved, I identify key moments when they cemented racial ideas into law and reshaped the terms of U.S. racial-imperial formation. 

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

katrina quisumbing king studies racial classification and exclusion from a historical perspective that foregrounds the state’s authority to manage populations. She is particularly interested in the ways state actors conceive of and make decisions around race and citizenship. Her research recenters empire as a key political formation. In the U.S. context, she focuses especially on how the state defines colonized populations and how these people fit into the U.S. racial order.