Julian Lim, assistant professor at the Arizona State University School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, is the recipient of the 2019 Institute for Humanities Research Book Award for outstanding humanities-based scholarship.
Dr. Lim was honored for her book Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). The book presents the case that nations and governments have long used borders to regulate race and national identity and that racially charged immigration laws have created a monoracial identity and effectively erased the multiracial reality of the past.
“Many Americans would assume that because I am talking about the U.S.-Mexico border, that my subjects were primarily Mexican and Anglo-American,” Dr. Lim notes. “But in fact, the border region was home to diverse indigenous peoples long before any European arrived, and became home to a much more heterogeneous population by 1900 including many Chinese and African American migrants. And it could have continued to grow in diversity, were it not for the passage of increasingly restrictive federal immigration laws that were designed to exclude racially undesirable immigrants.”
On receiving the book award, Dr. Lim said, “I am honored to be selected for the award. The IHR is a critical institution of intellectual exchange, fostering conversations about issues affecting the broader community in Arizona and beyond. I am very grateful to have its support.”
Dr. Lim holds a bachelor’s degree in literature and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in history from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.