Cultivating Empire: U.S. Statecraft and the Racial Management of the Philippines
Cultivating Empire addresses how overseas imperial rule of the Philippines transformed U.S. law and administration. Between 1898 and 1946, U.S. state actors made war, responded to anxieties raised by encountering human difference, and debated their visions for U.S. white hegemony at home and abroad. As they wrestled with how the United States could claim more territory, resources, and sovereign power without incorporating new nonwhite people, state actors lay foundations for durable racial imperial rule that outlasted the years of formal empire. By charting U.S. state actors’ conflicts over 50 years, this book shows how race and the management of colonial subjects reshaped U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Gradations of Citizenship, Sovereignty, and Racial Eligibility in U.S. Empire, 1848-1979
Today, nearly 4 million people live in U.S. territories. They live under the U.S. flag and hold U.S. passports, but they cannot vote in federal elections. To address how the United States arrived at this state of unequal citizenship, I analyze how U.S. state actors concretized ideas of racial difference in decisions about who and what belonged. From 1848-1917, the United States acquired new territories, among them: New Mexico, Alaska, Guam American Sāmoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. While existing work focuses on popular racial depictions of Hawaiʻi, Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, I ask how bureaucrats, legislators, and judges made decisions about civic and political status during this period and through the 1970s. In this extended timeframe, I analyze the variations in racial management across multiple sites of U.S. empire. This project illuminates the racial limits to U.S. democracy and the experiences of colonial populations