NCID-1130
Melissa Borja
2022 Anti-Racism Collaborative Research & Community Impact Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture
University of Michigan
Education/Degree:
1 History (Columbia University)
About
Dr. Borja is currently an assistant professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan, where she is a core faculty member in the Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program. She earned a PhD and MPhil in history from Columbia University, in addition to an MA in history from the University of Chicago and an AB in history from Harvard University. Before teaching at the University of Michigan, Dr. Borja was a faculty member in the Department of History at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She has been awarded the ACLS/Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship, Shawn Fellowship, Evelyn Walker Fellowship, Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize, and Foreign Language and Area Studies Grant. Her research has been supported by the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life; the Immigration History Research Center; the Center for the Study of World Religion; and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History.
Current Work
In her current project, Dr. Borja explores how US refugee resettlement policies changed the religious lives of Hmong refugees. First, US refugee policies disrupted the practice of indigenous Hmong religion by depriving Hmong people of necessary resources for rituals. Second, the public-private, church-state resettlement system initiated close relationships between animist Hmong refugees and Christian resettlement workers. Thus, the US refugee program introduced new religious alternatives to the Hmong at the same time they rendered their traditional religion unviable.
Research Area Keyword(s)
Asian American studies, government, refugee and immigration studies, religion, US history