Position: Adjunct Professor
Region: United States
Field: Asian American Immigration
Email: gordonap@msu.edu
Professor Pegler-Gordon teaches courses in Asian American history, immigration policy, oral history, public history, museums and K-12 history education, primarily at the James Madison College. She has published two monographs: “In Sight of America: Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy” (2009) and “Closing the Golden Door: Asian Migration and the Hidden History of Exclusion at Ellis Island” (2021). The first was awarded the Immigration and Ethnic History Society’s Theodore Salouto’s prize “for the book judged best on any aspect of the immigration history of the United States”; the second received an Honorable Mention for the Association for Asian American Studies History Book Prize. An American Quarterly drawn from her research was selected for inclusion as the lead essay in Best American History Essays. Professor Pegler-Gordon is currently publishing on Wong Kim Ark and birthright citizenship, writing a third book about Japanese American resistance outside of confinement camps during World War II, and conducting research for a project on the representations of Chinese Americans during World War II.
Professor Pegler-Gordon also works with graduate students in the History and Anthropology Departments and with undergraduate students on their collaboratively created digital research such as “Asian Americans in Michigan” (2019) and publications such as “What Kind of Justice? Oral Histories about Vincent Chin, Forty Years Later” (2022), “On the Banks: Currents within APIDA/A Youth Experiences in Michigan” (2023).
Professor Pegler-Gordon has received fellowships for her teaching and research, including national and international awards from the Organization of American Historians, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and the Japanese Association for American Studies. At MSU, she received a Teacher-Scholar Award, a Lilly Teaching Fellowship, a James Madison College Senior Teaching Award, and recognition for her teaching and service from the Asian Pacific American Student Organization (APASO). Professor Pegler-Gordon also served as director of MSU’s Asian Pacific American Studies Program and is currently active in forming a Union of Tenure System Professors, organizing with the Michigan Education Association.