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Carly Goodman is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Rutgers University-Camden. She also serves as senior editor of Made by History at TIME Magazine (formerly at The Washington Post) and previously served as a visiting assistant professor of history at La Salle University. She consults on public history projects including the National Immigration Museum at Ellis Island (2023-present) and was the Mellon/American Council of Learned Society Public Fellow and Communications Analyst at American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia. In addition, she has worked at Nationalities Service Center in Philadelphia and Human Rights First in New York. She earned her doctorate in history from Temple University and a Bachelor of Arts in history from Columbia University. Goodman received the 2023 Furniss Book Award for "Dreamland: American’s Immigration Lottery in an Age of Restriction."
Book Abstract:
In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be true. Just as unlikely is the idea that the United States would make such visas available to foster diversity within a country where systemic racism endures. But in 1990, the United States Diversity Visa Lottery was created to do just that.
"Dreamland" tells the surprising story of this unlikely government program and its role in American life as well as the global story of migration. Historian Carly Goodman takes readers from Washington, D.C., where proponents deployed a colorblind narrative about our "nation of immigrants" to secure visas for white immigrants, to the African countries where it flourished and fostered dreams of going to America. From the post office to the internet, aspiring emigrants, visa agents, and others embraced the lottery and tried their luck in a time of austerity and limits. Rising African immigration to the United States has enriched American life, created opportunities for mobility, and nourished imagined possibilities. But the promise of the American dream has been threatened by the United States' embrace of anti-immigrant policies and persistent anti-Black racism.
