History Department to Host Lecture Honoring Long-time Faculty Member Otey Scruggs

Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof

A lecture in honor of the late Otey Scruggs, a distinguished historian who served on the Maxwell School faculty for more than 35 years, will be held on Monday, Oct. 6.  Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof, associate professor of American culture and history, and director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Michigan, will discuss “How Migration to New York Shaped the Politics of Race and Citizenship in Late-19th Century Cuba.”

The lecture, which is sponsored by the history department, will be held in 204 Maxwell Hall at 4 p.m. with a reception following the program.

Hoffnung-Garskof is the author of “A Tale of Two Cities:  Santo Domingo and New York After 1950”  (Princeton University Press, 2010). His talk will be followed by responses from Andrew Wender Cohen, associate professor of history and the Otey and Barbara Scruggs History Faculty Scholar at the Maxwell School, and Gladys McCormick, assistant professor of history at Maxwell.

Scruggs, who retired from Syracuse University in 1995, was an expert on 19th century American history and African American history.  His publications include “Braceros, ‘Wetbacks,’ and the Farm Labor Problem: A History of Mexican Agricultural Labor in the U.S., 1942-1954″ and” We the Children of Africa in this Land: Alexander Crummell.”