Maria Cristina Garcia

Howard A. Newman Professor of American Studies and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow

Awards and Honors

Recent honors and awards:

  • Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow
  • Andrew Carnegie Fellow
  • American Academy of Arts and Sciences
  • Society of American Historians
  • President’s and Provost’s Award for Excellence in Research, Teaching, and Service in Diversity
  • Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award, Cornell University
  • Stephen and Margery Russell Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Arts and Sciences, Cornell University

Publications

Books

  • State of Disaster: The Failure of US Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change (University of North Carolina Press, 2022).
  • The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America (Oxford University Press, 2017)
  • Seeking Refuge: Central American Migration to Mexico, the United States, and Canada (University of California Press, 2006).
  • Havana USA: Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans in South Florida (University of California Press, 1996).

Edited Books

  • Whose America? US immigration policy since 1986 (with Maddalena Marinari), University of Illinois Press, 2019.
  • A Nation of Immigrants reconsidered: US Society in an Age of Restriction, 1924-1965 (with Maddalena Marinari and Madeline Hsu), University of Illinois Press, 2019.

Books in Progress

  • Origin Stories: Myth and History in the American Immigration Experience (under contract)

Select recent articles, book chapters, and public access articles

Responsibilities

Director, Latino Studies Program

In the news

Courses - Spring 2026

Courses - Fall 2026

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