911³Ô¹Ï

Areas of interest

Transpacific and borderlands history, race, migration, legal history.

Biography

I grew up around the world, attending school in places as distant from one another as Amsterdam, Pennsylvania, Hiroshima, and Bangaluru. After graduating from the University of Washington School of Law in 1991, I clerked for several years for judges at the Washington Court of Appeals and the Federal District Court for the Western District of Washington, and served as a Reservation Attorney for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in northeastern Washington. My interest in exploring ways in which law was historically used to create and maintain racial boundaries led me to return to school to study history at the graduate level at the University of Washington, where I completed a Ph.D. in history in 2006. I joined the History Department at 911³Ô¹Ï in 2005 and retired in 2022 to focus on my research and writing. I remain active as a writer and an historian and continue to draw on my background in both law and history in the work that I do.