In this episode, Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Anna O. Law, a political science who retrained herself in historical methods to write her new book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship. Anna is a professor of political science and Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College. In her new books, she takes a close look at which parts and levels of government in the United States have controlled people's ability to move around and across borders throughout the country's history. It's a history that is especially pertinent now, as we await the Supreme Court's forthcoming decision about the Trump administration's attempt to end the right to birthright citizenship protected under the 14th amendment of the constitution.

Anna and Kate talked about what it meant to think like a historian as well as a political scientist. She also divulged her decidedly analog research tools, the feedback she asks colleagues to give on her drafts, and her advice for any writer deciding on a press for publishing a book.

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• Anna O. Law's website
• Anna Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship
• Anna Law, The Immigration Battle in American Courts
• Metal page darts
• Sarasa gel pens
• Anna's favorite Clairefontaine notebooks
• Anna Law on BlueSky
• Anna's blog post about writing the second book
• Episode 102: Gautham Rao
• Megan Kate Nelson, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (and my first and second interviews with her)
• Lucy Salyer, Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law and Under the Starry Flag: How a Band of Irish Americans Joined the Fenian Revolt and Sparked a Crisis Over Citizenship