Education
Biography
Research Interests
I am a scholar of U.S. foreign relations, U.S. immigration, and labor history.
I am currently researching the history of sexual violence and the U.S. military in the late 20th century. This project will begin in the early 1970s, with the debut of the All-Volunteer Force, and trace events through the early 21st century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The shift to the All-Volunteer Force (1973) marked a seminal change in the military’s relationship to U.S. citizenship and masculinity.
My publications include In Camps: Vietnamese refugees, asylum seekers, and repatriates (UC Press 2020) and Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution (UC Press, 2009).
I have also been engaged with numerous public history projects, including Don’t Stand Alone: New Orleans Black Labor Organizing and the Guantánamo Public Memory Project.
Selected Publications
Books, Translations, and Edited Collections
In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates. Oakland: University of California Press, 2020.
The Ship of Fate: The Memoir of a Vietnamese Repatriate By Tran Dinh Tru. Co-Translator with Bac Hoai Tran. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2017.
• Author, “Introduction,” The Ship of Fate.
Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism. Co-editor with Daniel Bender (University of Toronto), New York: NYU Press, 2015.
• Co-author of introduction with Daniel E. Bender, “Through the Looking Glass: U.S. Empire Through the Lens of Labor History”
Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009.
Selected Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Co-authored with Muge Dalkiran, “ ‘But we have to be realistic’: Examining the origins of Temporary Protection in the USA and the European Union,” Journal of Refugee Studies, 2025, feaf005, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaf005
“Black British Politics, Bernie Grant, and the Question of Hong Kong Migration,” Historical Workshop Journal, 2024, dbae022, https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbae02
Co-authored with Michael J. Bustamante. “ ‘That is where the similarity ends’: Refugee Policies, Communities, and Connections between Cubans and Vietnamese,” Cold War History, 2024.
“Where is Guantánamo in Granma? Competing Discourses on Detention and Terrorism” Guantánamo and the Empire of Freedom: Politics and the Humanities at a Global Crossroads, eds., Don Walicek and Jessica Adams, Palgrave McMillan Press, 2018.
“ ‘A Precedent Worth Setting…’: Military Humanitarianism: The U.S. Military and the 1975 Vietnamese Evacuation,” Journal of Military History, January 2015.
“A Refugee Camp in America: Fort Chaffee and Vietnamese and Cuban Refugees, 1975-1982,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Winter 2014.
“ ‘The Fish Trusts the Water, and It is in the Water that it is Cooked’: The Caribbean Origins of the Krome Detention Center,” Radical History Review Special Issue on “Haiti and the World,” Winter 2013.
“ ‘Give Us a Ship’: Vietnamese Repatriates on Guam, 1975,” American Quarterly, March 2012.
“ ‘The Face is the Roadmap’: Vietnamese Amerasians in U.S. Political and Popular Culture, 1980-1988,” Journal of Asian American Studies, February 2011: 33-68.
“Between Guantánamo and Montego Bay: Cuba, Jamaica, Migration, and the Cold War, 1959-1962,” Immigrants and Minorities, November 2002: 25-51.
Invited/Solicited Essays
"Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants: The Creation and Contestation of an Unwieldy Acronym," Stateless Histories, January 24, 2022, https://statelesshistories.org/article/just-a-test-artilc
“American Exceptionalism Dies Hard” Diplomatic History Covid-19 Forum, Diplomatic History, June 2021. https://academic.oup.com/dh/article/45/3/525/6311868?login=true
“Immigrant and Black in Edwdige Danticat’s Brother, I’m Dying,” Forum: Nation of Immigrants, Modern American History, 2018.
“U.S. Political History in the Age of Trump: A Review Essay,” Nanzan Review of American Studies, 2017.
Selected Prizes and Fellowships
- Fulbright-Diplomatic Academy, Vienna School of International Studies, Visiting Professor, 2022
- Honorable Mention, Association of Asian American Studies Book Prize, History Division, 2022
- Honorable Mention, Robert Ferrell Book Prize, SHAFR, 2021
- Office of Research Award in Student Research Mentoring, 2021
- Newcomb Tulane College Honors Professor of the Year, 2019
- Newcomb Tulane College Advising Excellence Award, 2018
- OAH/JAAS Japan Residency, Osaka University, 2017
- Tulane School of Liberal Arts April Brayfield Prize for Excellence in Teaching, 2015
- Constance Rourke Essay Prize for the best article published in American Quarterly , 2012
- Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Research Travel Grant, 2011
- General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Military History Research Grant, 2010
- Co-Winner Taft Book Prize in Labor History, 2009
Jana Lipman In The News
"The Entry Fiction"
NPR White Lies Podcast, February 2023
“The United States has long sought to exploit Guantánamo’s legal contradictions”
Washington Post, January 2022
“Not Just Rescue”
Refugee History, April 2021
Jana K. Lipman, "In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Repatriates"
New Books Network Podcast, October 30, 2020
"The Day I Start Being Free": Detained Migrants Struggle for Human Rights
History News Network.org, July 12, 2020
Coronavirus exacerbates plight of asylum seekers in Louisiana
(with Olivia Mancing, MPH '20), The Advocate, June 19, 2020
Why Hong Kong’s untold history of protecting refugee rights matters now in its struggle with China
The Conversation.com, June 4, 2020
Detaining refugee children at military bases may sound un-American, but it's been done before
The Conversation.com, June 18, 2019
Five Things to Know About Guantánamo Bay on its 115th Birthday
The Conversation, December 10, 2018
Military Bases used to welcome refugees to the U.S., Now American bases are being used to scare them away
The Washington Post, July 5, 2018
The South Vietnamese who Fled the Fall of Saigon and those who returned
The Conversation, September 19, 2017