ABOUT ME
Cody Nager is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover History Lab and teaches courses to undergraduate and graduate students. His scholarship and teaching focus on how interactions between America’s diverse people, such as African Americans and the Irish, and the broader Atlantic world shaped domestic debates over legal structures, racial and ethnic inequality, political rights, economic development and national identity from colonial times to the present. He received his doctorate in history from the Graduate Center, City University of New York in Spring 2023. Prior to Stanford, he was a dissertation fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies. In addition to Stanford, he has taught at the City College of New York, Texas Tech University, University of Pennsylvania, and the CUNY School of Law.
His manuscript, Determined to be American: Regulating Migration and Citizenship in the Early American Republic, 1783–1815, investigates how the new nation’s precarious international and domestic position shaped migration debates, dividing Americans into political parties with different visions for the nation’s future. Internationally, the turmoil of the Atlantic world, such as the French and Haitian Revolutions, ongoing slave resistance, and the Napoleonic Wars buffeted the nation. Domestically, indigenous resistance, European colonial designs, and perceived risk of slave revolts heightened tensions. These threatening circumstances forced Americans to determine who could reside in the nation, how they would be integrated, and who would be excluded. Migrants, especially the enslaved and Irish Catholics, forced Americans to confront a panoply of political leanings, economic circumstances, and ideologies. Americans thought selecting the “right” immigrants would bring economic success, while picking the “wrong” ones would take the jobs of hardworking residents, occupy fertile western lands with unproductive populations, and expand slavery. The continuous reassessment of migration regulations shaped migration law and politics, divided Americans into parties, escalated the conflict between their visions for the nation’s future, and formed battle lines in clashes over migration regulation that continue to this day.
His next project investigates how American law shaped the relationship between race, ethnicity, and migration, focusing on how racial and ethnic minorities navigated uneven enforcement of federal policies to access excluded rights. While the Naturalization Act of 1790 limited naturalization to free white persons, local courts controlled enforcement and the definition of whiteness, allowing some individuals to circumvent racial barriers. When the United States purchased Louisiana, some African Americans worked to bypass the racialized naturalization process. In the 1840s, the contested whiteness of Irish immigrants presented local courts with new challenges. Despite federal control over migration post-Reconstruction, gaps persisted. 20th century policy shifts, such as the 1924 National Origins Act limits on Southern and Eastern European migration and the 1965 Hart-Celler Act’s aid to new migration flows from Africa, Asia and South America, further complicated enforcement boundaries. The recent rise of sanctuary cities highlights the ongoing evolution of race, ethnicity, federalism, and migrant opportunity. This project aims to shed light on how historical precedents continue to influence contemporary debates over race and migration policy.