The idea that the United States is a "nation of immigrants" plays a large role in American culture and debate. Scholars have described the United States in many different ways - as a "melting pot," a "salad bowl," or a "symphony orchestra" of different immigrant groups - yet all have agreed that immigration has contributed significantly to the formation of the nation, and continues to do so today. In this class, we will examine the history of that immigration-of the many people who have traveled to the United States from other countries and who have built their lives there, helping to build the United States itself in the process.
We will also, however, place these stories of immigration within a larger, complex, and fascinating world of human migrations in modern United States history. We will see migrants coming to the U.S. in great numbers, but also returning to their home countries after living in the U.S. for years. We will trace significant migrations of Americans within their own national borders, migrations that are often ignored by scholars but that have dramatically changed American culture and society. We will explore the imperial and global economic contexts of migration flows, investigating the ways in which U.S. foreign policy and international affairs have affected migration patterns. And we will confront the ever-changing relationship that Americans have had with the very idea of immigration, up to and including recent debates over illegal immigration in the American Southwest.
Class discussions and readings will be in English.
If you can't register for this course in Campus Management, please try again in 1-2 weeks time or call 838-52474 between 10 and 12 AM. Schließen

READING LIST Week 1: Introductions Week 2: Human Mobility and the U.S. Civil War - Yael Sternhell, "Southerners on the Run," Chap. 3 in Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 93-154. (Full chapter recommended, but only pages 94-113; 118-134; 148-154 required.) - Selections from Kate Stone, Brokenburn: The Journal of Kate Stone, 1861-1868, ed. John Q. Anderson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1995). Week 3: European Immigration . . . and Return Migration - Mark Wyman, "A Two Way Migration" and "Leaving the Land of Bosses and Clocks," Chaps. 1 and 4 in Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 3-14; 74-98. - Rosa Cassettari, "Rosa Cassettari: From Northern Italy to Chicago, 1884-1926" in Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773-1986, ed. Thomas Dublin (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 110-145. (All recommended, but only pages 110-120 and 125-131 required.) Week 4: Myth-making, Tourism, and Westward Migration - Phoebe S. Kropp, "Los Días Pasados: Tales from Nineteenth-Century California," Chap. 1 in California Vieja: Culture and Memory in a Modern American Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 19-46. - Charles Dudley Warner, "Our Italy" Harper's New Monthly Magazine 81 (November 1890): 813-830. Week 5: Asian Immigration, Angel Island, and Medical Regulation - Nayan Shah, "Making Medical Borders at Angel Island," Chap. 7 in Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 179-203 - Selection of poetry discovered on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Week 6: Race-Making and Immigration Restrictions - Mae M. Ngai, "The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Re-examination of the Immigration Act of 1924," The Journal of American History 86, No. 1 (June 1999): 67-92. - Selections from United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, Certificate From The Circuit Court Of Appeals For The Ninth Circuit., No. 202. Argued January 11, 12, 1923.-Decided February 19, 1923, United States Reports, v. 261, The Supreme Court, October Term, 1922, 204-215. Accessible on History Matters, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5076/. Week 7: Culture, Racial Systems, and the Great Migration - James N. Gregory, "The Black Metropolis," Chap. 4 in The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 113-152. - Richard Wright, Selections from American Hunger, in Up South: Stories, Studies, and Letters of this Century's Black Migration, ed. Malaika Adero (New York: CUNY New Press, 1993), 116-135. Week 8: Immigration and U.S. Empire - Catherine Ceniza Choy, "'Your Cap is a Passport': Filipino Nurses and the U.S. Exchange Visitor Program," Chap. 3 in Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 61-93. - A. B. Santos and Juanita Santos, "We Have to Show the Americans that We Can Be as Good as Anybody," in Filipino American Lives, ed. Yen Le Espiritu (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 37-51. Week 9: Prospectus Presentations Week 10: Prospectus Presentations Week 11: Labor, the U.S.-Mexico Border, and the Bracero Program - Deborah Cohen, "Caught in the Middle: The Mexican State's Relationship with the United States and its Own Citizen-Workers," Journal of American Ethnic History 20, No. 3 (Spring 2001): 110-132. - Matthew García, "Intraethnic Conflict and the Bracero Program during World War II" in American Dreaming, Global Realities: Rethinking U.S. Immigration History, ed. Donna R. Gabaccia and Vicki L. Ruiz (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 399-408. - Jose-Rodolfo Jacobo, Los Braceros: Memories of Bracero Workers 1942-1964 (San Diego, CA: Southern Border Press, 2004), 69-86. Week 12: Suburbanization and the Politics of Postwar "Freedom" - Matthew D. Lassiter, "Suburban Strategies: The Volatile Center in Postwar American Politics," in The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, ed. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 327-349. - Selections from D. J. Waldie, Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996). Week 13: Reforming/Revising Immigration Restrictions - Mae M. Ngai, "The Liberal Critique and Reform of Immigration Policy," Chap. 7 in Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004), 227-264. Week 14: Policing Sexuality at the Border - Eithne Luibheid, "Looking Like a Lesbian: Sexual Monitoring at the U.S.-Mexico Border" Chap. 4 in Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 77-102. - Selections from Gilberto Gerald, "With My Head Held High," in In the Life: A Black Gay Anthology, ed. Joseph Beam (Los Angeles: Alyson Books, 1986). Week 15: Cuban Refugees, Family, and the Popular Media - Sarah Banet-Weiser, "Elián González and 'The Purpose of America': Nation, Family, and the Child-Citizen," American Quarterly 55, No. 2 (June 2003): 149-178. - Selection of articles from U.S. periodicals, TBA. Week 16: Trans-national Churches and Undocumented Migrants - Jacqueline Hagan, "Churches Crossing Borders," Chap. 3 in Migration Miracle: Faith, Hope, and Meaning on the Undocumented Journey (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 82-113. - Selections from Strangers No Longer: Together on the Journey of Hope (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc. and Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano, 2003). Schließen