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Jana Lipman is a specialist in the 20th-century U.S., especially foreign relations, social and political history, Cuba and Vietnam.
I am interested in US foreign relations broadly construed. My work on the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay (GTMO) demonstrated how neocolonialism, empire, and revolution functioned in working people's lives. Through extensive field and archival research in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantánamo, Cuba, I analyzed how Cuban base employees navigated the politics and contradictions of living in Cuba and working for the US military.
My current book project examines the history of Vietnamese refugee camps in Guam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Hong Kong. My research interests include the fields of refugee studies, human rights, and US military bases in the second half of the twentieth century.
I teach a wide range of undergraduate and graduate courses in U.S. foreign relations, immigration, and 20th century political history. Specialized classes include seminars on the U.S. War in Vietnam, U.S. Public History, and Labor and Migration. I have also taught numerous service learning classes and mentored student internships. At the graduate level, I mentor students in 20th century U.S. history, U.S. Empire, U.S.-Latin American relations, and Labor History.
In Camps: Vietnamese Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates (Oakland: University of California Press, forthcoming 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.
American Quarterly: Tours of Duty/Tours of Leisure: The Politics and Cultures of Militarism and Tourism. Co-Edited Special Issue with Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez (University of Hawai’i) and Teresia Teaiwa, (Victoria University of Wellington), Fall 2016.
• Co-Author of “Introduction: Tours of Duty, Tours of Leisure” with Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez
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.
“War, Persecution, and Displacement: U.S. Refugee Policy Since 1945,”At War: Militarism and U.S. Culture in the 20th Century and Beyond, eds. David Kieran and Edwin A. Martini, Rutgers University Press, 2018.
“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.
“ ‘Airlines. Lousy Unions.’ Labor in the Era of Junk Bonds and Wall Street Buyouts.” In The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade?” Eds. Kimberly Moffitt and Duncan Campbell. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011.
“Guantánamo and the Case of Kid Chicle: Labor, Privatization, and the Law in the Expansion of US Empire.” In Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State. Eds. Alfred McCoy and Francisco Scarano. Madison: University of Wisconsin, 2009.
“ “Buenos Vecinos”, Ciudadanos y Súbditos: Nacionalidad y Competencia Laboral en la Base Naval de Estados Unidos en Guantánamo.” Trans. Rolando García Milián. Ed. Hernán Venegas Delgado et al. Historia Regional y Local. Las ciudades, su historia y su proyección en la región. Cuba-México, Centro Universitario de Los Altos de la Universidad de Guadalajara, Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas, Instituto de Historia de Cuba y Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, 2008, pp. 209-218.
Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Repatriates: Vietnamese Refugee Camps 1975-2005 (Book Project, in Progress).
“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.
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