Makings and Unmakings of Americans

Cristina Stanciu is associate professor of English and director of the Humanities Research Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is coeditor of Laura Cornelius Kellogg: Our Democracy and the American Indian and Other Writings.

“By raising up the voices of American Indians and European immigrants—people who were both objects and adversaries of Americanization—Stanciu provides a stunning, pluralistic vision of this crucial moment in U.S history.”—Frederick E. Hoxie, author of This Indian Country“This book is phenomenal! Stanciu’s book is well-researched, showcasing the benefits of creatively using archives. A comparative cultural history, this project is a model for future historians and literary historians alike.”—Kyle T. Mays, author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States“In this expansive study, Stanciu centers Indigenous experiences of Americanization, revealing shared and divergent grounds with Immigrants in law, literature, and culture. Deeply researched and powerfully told, it refuses Indigenous erasure of the “nation of immigrants” framework. Essential reading.”—Beth Piatote, author of Domestic Subjects“Cristina Stanciu highlights the ways Native Americans and immigrant communities negotiated, and at times ‘authored,’ the terms of Americanization for themselves, and in so doing reworked categories of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ to challenge the terms by which the nation sought to expand and define its reach.”—Kiara M. Vigil, author of Indigenous Intellectuals“In the midst of renewed immigrant exclusion and continued colonization of Native nations, this original and intriguing book is timely. Cristina Stanciu exposes the artificiality of ‘making Americans’ in a settler-colonial state.”—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Not “A Nation of Immigrants”