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How do race and class impact what it means to be American today? What do citizenship and immigration look like in the current context of \u201cAmerica first\u201d and \u201cnationalism\u201d? A diverse panel of experts from the University of Southern California will discuss these and other questions in this timely and critical conversation.conversation. Recorded live on USC's campus on April 14, 2019.

PANELISTS

Juan De Lara\xa0is an assistant professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC.\xa0His most recent book,\xa0Inland Shift:\xa0Race, Space, and Capital in Southern California\xa0(2018),\xa0uses global commodity chains and logistics to examine how race, class, and twenty-first-century capitalism reshaped Southern California between 1980 and 2010. His forthcoming book,\xa0Data, Race, and Social Justice, will examine the growing use of data science and integrated technologies by state actors to manage and to mitigate socio-economic differences.

Sam Erman\xa0is an associate professor at the USC Gould School of Law and scholar of history of law whose research focuses on race, citizenship, and constitutional change. He is the author of\xa0Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire\xa0(2018).\xa0His work has also appeared in top journals in law and history, including the\xa0Michigan Law Review,\xa0California Law Review,\xa0Southern California Law Review, and\xa0Journal of American Ethnic History.

Elda Mar\xeda Rom\xe1n\xa0is an assistant professor of English at USC. As a scholar in literary and cultural studies, she researches race and class, examining their effects across ethnic groups and through scholarship across disciplines. She has published articles on Latinx and African American cultural production and is the author of\xa0Race and Upward Mobility: Seeking, Gatekeeping, and Other Class Strategies in Postwar America\xa0(2017). Her current project examines contemporary narratives about fears of changing demographics.

Duncan Ryuken Williams\xa0is professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures at USC and director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. Williams is the author of\xa0The Other Side of Zen: A Social History of S\u014dt\u014d Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan\xa0(2004) and his latest book,\xa0American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War\xa0(2019), looks at Buddhism and the Japanese American internment.

Jody Agius Vallejo\xa0(moderator) is associate professor of Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity and associate director of the Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration at USC. Her book,\xa0Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class\xa0(2012), examines mobility mechanisms, socioeconomic incorporation, racial/ethnic and class identities, patterns of giving back to kin and community, and civic engagement among middle-class Mexican Americans. A second book, in progress, investigates the rise of the contemporary Latino elite in the U.S.