Paul Spickard

Paul Spickard is an American historian specializing in race and ethnicity, particularly multiraciality. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his undergraduate degree from Harvard University. He served as the Director of Research at the Institute for Polynesian Studies in Honolulu as well as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at BYU-Hawaii. Dr. Spickard was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians in 2013 and currently teaches as a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Dr. Spickard is the author of many books, including Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race and Colonialism in American History and Identity (2007); Is Lighter Better? Skin-Tone Discrimination among Asian Americans (2007); Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World (2005); Racial Thinking in the United States (2004); and Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (1989). His work was formative in rearticulating and moving beyond a black/white paradigm of race and mixed-race relations in the U.S.

Awards

In 2011, Dr. Spickard was awarded The Loving Prize at the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival for his groundbreaking research on mixed racial and cultural experiences. He has also been named a Fulbright Research Professor and Rockefeller Foundation Residential Fellow. In 2013, he received the Richard A. Yarborough Mentoring Award from the American Studies Association and has received over a dozen teaching awards at UCSB.