Lee, Jessica

Jessica Lee is a historian of immigration and citizenship in the United States. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in history and Italian literature, and her Ph.D. from Columbia in history. She wrote her doctoral dissertation, under the supervision of Mae Ngai, on the creation of an Italian American voting block, by examining how Mussolini grew his emigrant population in America into a political asset before World War II. She continues to study and write about citizenship as a legal status, human right, and a tool for political representation. She teaches Immigration and Citizenship in American History, Methods in American Studies, and Immigrant New York, and advises senior theses in the Center for American Studies.

Dr. Lee is currently the Executive Director of the educational nonprofit Freedom and Citizenship in the Center for American Studies and co-chair of the Knowledge for Freedom initiative. Freedom and Citizenship brings low-income New York City public school students to Columbia’s campus each year to teach the philosophy, history, methods, and mechanics of citizenship from Ancient Greece to contemporary America. Its goal is to prepare dedicated, underserved youth for lives of active citizenship. Through Knowledge for Freedom, she helps universities across the country build programs on the Freedom and Citizenship model.

Selected Scholarship:

"Columbia University's Freedom and Citizenship Program," Restoring the Public Purpose of America's Urban Universities, Netter Center for Community Partnerships, Spring 2024

“Italian Fascists and the Rewriting of American History,” Italian American Review, Summer 2022

“The Italianization of the Italian American and Fascism’s Entrance into American Ethnic Politics, 1930-1935,” Italianness and Migration from the Risorgimento to the 1960s, Palgrave, New York, 2022

“What’s in a Race? The Changing Words and Ideas behind America’s Immigrant Classification Systems,” Journal of Urban History, August 2019