Resident Scholars - 2008-09

Michelle McKinley
Assistant Professor of Law

Michellle McKinley will continue her groundbreaking research on race, gender and cultural citizenship as a Wayne Morse Resident Scholar during 2008-09. Her project is entitled Bringing in Outsiders: Cultural Citizenship in Refugee and Asylum Law. She critically examines a new generation of refugee litigation focused on gender and culture, using the legal ambivalence of the refugee to explore critical aspects of our debate on citizenship.

McKinley is currently organizing a symposium on Contested Citizenships that will be held May 7 and 8, 2009. Senior scholars will discuss exciting new works by junior faculty and the Wayne Morse Dissertation Fellows. Leti Volpp, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, will give the keynote address on Thursday, May 7 at 4:30 p.m. at the Knight Law Center, with comments by Linda Bosniak from Rutgers University.

For more info, visit the Contested Citizenship website for the two day schedule.

Professor McKinley joined the UO law faculty in 2007. She attended Harvard Law School, where she was Executive Editor of the Harvard Human Rights Journal. McKinley has been active internationally, serving as the Managing Director of Cultural Survival, an advocacy and research organization dedicated to indigenous peoples.

Read Michelle McKinley's bio HERE.

Recent papers by Michelle McKinley:

Cultural Culprits
Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law, and Justice
Volume 24, Issue 2
Fall 2009

---

Daniel HoSang
Assistant Professor
Political Science and Ethnic Studies

The Wayne Morse Center is honored to welcome a remarkable young scholar, Dan HoSang, as a Resident Scholar for 2008-09. His project, Race, Direct Democracy and the Future of Civil Rights, he explores the way that ballot initiatives related to race, such as affirmative action and immigration policy, shape the terrain of state and national politics. His award-winning dissertation focused on California electoral initiatives, and he is completing a book on the subject entitled Racial Proposition: Genteel Apartheid in Postwar California.

As Resident Scholar, he will begin to turn his lens to Oregon and the northwest, seeking to trace the origin and development of the current “colorblind consensus” on race. He is organizing a major symposium on Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, reviewing the theory of racial formation as we approach the 25th anniversary of the groundbreaking book by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, “Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s.” The symposium on April 17 and 18, 2009, will gather leading scholars and activists engaged with issues of race and politics in the U.S.

Dr. HoSang earned his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2007. He has published several articles on race and American political development, political engagement of youth, and Asian Americans in the political process. HoSang is a public intellectual and activist with numerous community organizations.

Read Daniel HoSang's bio HERE.

 

---

The Resident Scholars for 2007-08 were Garrett Epps and Gordon Lafer.

Garrett Epps was the 2007-08 Wayne Morse Resident Scholar and Orlando John and Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law, at the University of Oregon. He researched the legislative history of the birthright citizenship guarantee of the 14th Amendment, a crucial issue in light of debates over increased immigration. The research follows Garrett's intriguing research that led to his recent book, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, that won him a 2007 Oregon Book Award. His project was potentially foundational work with important implications for law and policy.