Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification

CCSRE Faculty Seminar Series

Mike Amezcua (Georgetown University), "Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification"

Mike Amezcua is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Georgetown University. He is the author of Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (University of Chicago Press, 2022) published in the Historical Studies of Urban America series. In his book, Amezcua examines how federal policies of urban renewal and mass deportation intersected in the lives of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans as they navigated real estate boundaries, business development, and eventual gentrification to remake Chicago’s neighborhoods. His research has appeared in various journals such as The Journal of American History, Journal of Social History, and The Sixties as well as popular media outlets, including The Washington Post, Teen Vogue, Chicago Sun-Times, and Public Books. In 2020, Amezcua was the Co-Winner of the Arnold Hirsch Award for Best Article in Urban History by the Urban History Association and in 2021, he was named a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leader by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. Before joining the Georgetown faculty, Amezcua was an Assistant Professor at NYU. He teaches and writes about US 20th century history, Latinx history, urban studies, inequality, race, politics, and immigration.