*Donna recently graduated and is now the Mellon Research Assistant Professor in U.S. Law and Race at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Please direct any further contact to donnadoananderson@gmail.com.

I am interested in Asian/American diasporas in the Midwest and how Asian American Studies methodologies can better help us understand histories of the heartland. I invite you to visit my website for more information about my research projects and to view my CV!

Aside from the time dedicated to pursuing a PhD, I enjoy spending my time with a Diet Coke, singing along to kpop, and occasionally taking a *not staged* Instagram post.

"America is in the Heartland: Land Policy, Immigration, and Rural Asian America, 1860-1950"

  • Anderson, Donna Doan. “Acceptance for Admission: Administrations of Japanese American Relocation and the Midwestern University,” American Studies, Special Issue on “Unsettling Global Midwests,” November 2023. 
    • Winner of the Midwestern History Association’s Dorothy Schweider Prize for Best Article on Midwestern History (2024)
  • Anderson, Donna Doan. “‘More Than We Imagined’: The Journal of Asian American Studies Through the Years, 1997-Present,” Journal of Asian American Studies, Vol. 26, No.1 (2023), March 2023.
  • Vo, Hung and Anderson, Donna Doan. “Building the City from Abroad: Viet Kieu and the Rights to Saigon.” In Governing Cities in the 21st Century: Asian Perspectives. Routledge, March 2020.

Book Reviews

  • Anderson, Donna Doan. Review of Imagining the Heartland: White Supremacy and the American Midwest by Britt E. Halvorson and Joshua E. Reno. Ethnic Studies Review. October 2023.
  • Anderson, Donna Doan. Review of Chinese Americans in the Heartland: Migration, Work, and Community, by Huping Ling. Indiana Magazine of History. September 2023.
  • Anderson, Donna Doan. Review of Theft Is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory, by Robert Nichols. The Journal of Peasant Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2054761. April 2022.

U.S. History

World History

Comparative Race and Ethnicity

Asian American Studies

  • Recipient of the Immigration History Research Center Archives (IHRCA) Grant-in-Aid Award, University of Minnesota (2022)
  • Recipient of the George and Arlene Cheng Fellowship in Asian American Studies, The Huntington (2022)
  • Recipient of the Charles Redd Center Fellowship in Western American Studies (2022)
  • Recipient of the J. Bruce Anderson Memorial Fellowship (2021)
  • Recipient of UCSB Academic Senate’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award (2021)
  • Recipient of UCSB’s Dixon-Levy Service Award (2018-2019)

Member of the The Asian/American Studies Collective (AASC) Research Focus Group and the Asian-Pacific Islander Graduate Student Alliance (APIGSA)