ABOUT US

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

     Thank you for your interest in the Angel Island Immigration Station!  Dominican University of California’s Public History program is proud to showcase the talents of 17 students from our FA2018 HIST 3901 course. Public history itself is a growing field, represented in both academia and a variety of professional careers. Despite the diversity in potential career paths, trained public historians share a common purpose, to communicate historical content to the public.  Trained public historians can be found working in museums, heritage sites, public parks, the Hollywood film industry, the media, and at every level of government. Beyond this, Public Historians are also found working as or alongside archaeologists, oral history specialists, genealogical researchers, online content creators, and in a variety of other career trajectories.  

The History Department at Dominican is committed to graduating students with a diverse set of skills and knowledge that prepares them to live in the globalized 21stcentury.  Our department, with the creation of History 3901, now requires students to expand their skillset to include the creation of high quality media content designed for public consumption.  These projects, like the one you are about to enjoy, are based on in-depth individual research projects that I individually advised upon.  Students were required to network with local historical resources as part of their research, resulting in an overarching effort to showcase the power of collecting and organizing community knowledge.  All of the students represented here developed highly marketable skills; including, leadership, teambuilding, web design, audio/video content creation, editing, writing, and design.  The Public History skillset is paired with an equally rigorous classical historical education at Dominican University, designed in total to best equip our students with a variety of transferable skills, civil leadership, and historical knowledge for their future success.

     Special thanks to California State Parks, especially our primary liaison, Interpreter Casey Dexter-Lee, for partnering with Dominican University in this endeavor.  This project would not be possible without the extensive support of the National Archives and Records Administration: San Francisco.  Specifically, the direct support of Archivists John Seamans and William Greene was incredibly valuable, their hands are all over this project.  Other people and organizations, without whom this project would not exist, includes the Service Learning program, the Division of Public Affairs, and countless other supportive faculty and staff members here at Dominican .  The support of the Public History Program’s Intern, Alexandra Schumacher, was also vital for the success of this project.  Lastly, the staff, leadership, membership, and resources from the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation were essential to our own work and it is only with their cooperation that our final project came to fruition.  Additional thanks to Judy Yung, whose scholarship and special lecture on campus helped inform the project. In addition, the archival staff at the Marin County Anne T. Kent California Room, Laurie Thompson and Carol Acquaviva, supported many of these student projects.  Our students further explored other community resources, including a variety of local museums, veterans groups, and local experts—truly a list too long for a single page!

     The content found in this project is designed to serve as an introduction to the rich history found at the Angel Island Immigration Station.  We aim to make our shared history come alive; or, perhaps better phrased by Winston Churchill when he commented before parliament shortly after the fall of France in World War II, “History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, revive its echoes, and kinds with pale gleams the passion of former days.” 

In Appreciation,

Dr. Jordan Lieser, Dominican University of California History Department