Nolan Visits MN to Discuss Adoption, Migration, and “Home” in Book Talk
On March 19th, Professor Rachel Nolan, Assistant Professor of International History, discussed her book, Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala, at The College of St. Scholastica as part of the Alworth Center for the Study of Peace and Justice’s annual lecture series.
This year’s theme, Home, explores the many ways belonging and displacement are experienced across time and place. Nolan’s talk, Adoptions from Guatemala: A Historical Reckoning, continued that exploration by examining how children, families, and nations have been profoundly reshaped by global systems of adoption and migration.
Drawing on rare archival access to Guatemalan adoption records, materials that are no longer open to researchers, Nolan’s work raises urgent questions about state power, historical memory, and access to truth. Her research highlights not only the experiences of the roughly 40,000 Guatemalan adoptees now living in North America and Europe, but also the broader political and ethical consequences of global adoption systems shaped by inequality. The lecture addressed difficult subjects, including family separation and violence, while offering a historically grounded framework for understanding how these systems emerged and why they persist.
Nolan’s talk is one of two concluding events in the Alworth Center’s series focused on migration from Central America, situating contemporary debates over immigration within deeper historical contexts. The series invites audiences to consider migration not solely at the point of arrival in the United States, but at the moments of departure, loss, and rupture that redefine what home means.
Listen to Tim Lorek, Director of the Alworth Center, to learn more about lecture series here.
Professor Rachel Nolan is an Assistant Professor of International History at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. A historian of modern Latin America, her work focuses on migration, political violence, the Central American armed internal conflicts, and U.S.-Latin American relations. Her scholarly pursuits have been supported by Russell Sage Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Council. Additionally, she is an active contributor to media outlets including The New Yorker, New York Times, London Review of Books, New York Review of Books, and El Faro and serves as a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine.